tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430Tue, 15 Aug 2017 10:49:08 +0000cyclingcycling in New York CityNew York Citybicycle blogsbicyclescycling philosophycycle blogsbicycle bloggersurban cyclingcycle superhighwaysLondonNew York cyclingroad safetycarscycling policyCycling in LondonNYPDbike nycroads policyBoris JohnsonBrooklynBrooklyn BridgeLondon cycle bloggersManhattan Bridgebikenyccycling in New Yorkphilosophy of cyclingreflections on cyclingLondon cyclingcycling blogsBill de BlasioTransport for Londoncycling cultureAllison LiaoCitibikeJanette Sadik-KahnManhattanNew York cycling blogsRobert MosesVision Zerobike lanescongestioncycling bloggerscycling infrastructuremotorists and cyclistsAndrew GilliganBradley WigginsCarroll GardensCity of London policeDepartment of Motor VehiclesDetroitEric GarnerJanette Sadik-KhanKen LivingstoneMichael BloombergMichiganNew YorkNew York Taxi and Limousine CommissionQueensSoHoangercrimecycling familiescyclistscyclists and the lawcyling in New York 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Oisin TymonTour de FranceTower of LondonTrayvon MartinTrigger HappyTroyTwitterUnited KingdomVictoria NicodemusVictoria PendletonVincent ImpellitteriWalk Through the BottomlandWalkie TalkieWall Street JournalWalter ScottWar on MotoristsWards IslandWarrenWashingtonWaterloo BridgeWenjian LiuWestminster BridgeWilliam TweedWindsorWorld Traffic Safety Symposiumaggressionalternate side parkinganger at cyclistsanti-cyclist prejudice. helmetsanxietyassumptionsbarbecuesbicycle mechanicsbicycle pathsbike Bostonbike DCbike pathsbike sharebike technologyblizzardblizzardsbroken bonescapacitycar crashescar dependencecar servicescargo bikescars and violencechildhood cycling memorieschildhood memoriescity spacecivil rightsclimate changecommunicationcommunication on roadscommunitiescommunity boardsconcreteconflictconservatismcorruptioncovent gardencriminal justiceculpable homicideculturescycle aestheticscycle designcycle haterscycle lane lunacycycling and civil rightscycling and climate changecycling and fearcycling and public transportcycling and stresscycling and the lawcycling and the policecycling as exercisecycling controversiescycling costscycling dangerscycling designcycling in Birminghamcycling in Bostoncycling in Central Parkcycling in Chestercycling in Glasgowcycling in Hong Kongcycling in Manhattancycling in Miamicycling in Park Slopecycling in Prospect Parkcycling in Washington DCcycling in big citiescycling in countrysidecycling in midtowncycling in the darkcycling on the Brooklyn Bridgecycling on towpathscycling philiosophycycling salmoncycling with childrencycling with trafficcyclist hatredcyclist visibilitycyclists and violent crimedeclining suburbsdeerdelivery cyclistsdemocracyderived grammardistracted drivingdiversitydriver's licensedriversdrivingdriving licenceseconomic incentivesefficiency in transportelectionsenvironmentethics of cyclingfast cyclingfatalitiesfaulty thinkingfear and cyclingfear on roadsfilter bubblesfogfoggy Londonfree speechfreedomfreedom of speechfuel dutygarbagegenerationsgothic archesgothic architecturegun controlgun control and road safetyheat wagehelmetshigh visibility clotheshigh visibility clothinghippocampushot weatheridindependence referendumindyrefinfrastructureinteractions on streetsinternal dialoguesinternal monologueinternet cultureinterpersonal relationshipsislamismjoy of cyclingjoy of cylingjusticekeirinlate-night cyclinglearning to cycleless mobile peoplelife expectancylogicloyalismlycra-clad cyclistsmanslaughtermassmayoral electionsmemorymetrosmomentummoneymonologuesmoral developmentmoral philosophymoralitynarrativesnegligencenegligent homicidenetworksneurophysiologynoisesnycdrivingcultureon-street communicationon-street interactionsorthopaedic bootsout-groupsparadigmsparentsparked carsparkingpedestrian safetyperceptionsphysicspolice attitudespoliticianspower imbalancesprogressive caucusprogressivismprotestspsychologypublic spacepublic transitrational liferealityreasonreason and public policyred lightsreligion and road safetyreligion spiritualityreporting paradigmsresponsibilityrewardsrhythms of the cityriding in trafficrisk assessmentroad capacityroad conditionsroad culturesroad dangerroad safety and raceroad safety and spiritualityroad safety statisticsroad soundsroad spaceroadssabotagesafe streetssafety camerasschool shootingsshared humanityshootingsskyscraperssmellssnakessnowsocial attitudessocial interactionssocial mediasocial tensionssoundsspacesport cyclingstop lightsstreet communicationstreet designstreet drug dealersstreet safetystreet safety narrativesstreet spacestrikesstroadssuburbiasubwayssuperegosustainable citiessustainable transporttakeaway foodthinking about trafficthinking errorstolerancetrack cyclingtrade-offstraffictraffic and culturetraffic lawtraffic lightstraffic stopstraffic volumestrain crashestransport capacitytribunalsurban cycling cultureurban densityurban planningurban soundsurban sprawlurbanismvelocitywalkingwalknycwater bottleswater cannonweatherwell-trained fearwinter 2014winter weatheryoung cyclistsThe Invisible Visible ManWhen a one-time dabbler in moral philosophy rides his bike a lot...http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)Blogger119125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-6219162938942749126Sun, 09 Jul 2017 19:35:00 +00002017-07-09T15:35:05.400-04:00cycle superhighwayscycling activisminternet cultureLondon cyclingNew York cyclingA move back, two angry path-blockers - and why it's time to stop writing and start remembering<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On July 6 last year, I got on my bike for the last time outside my apartment building in Brooklyn. As I’d done hundreds of times before, I rode down Smith St and over the Manhattan Bridge to my employer’s office in west SoHo. Then, around lunchtime, I rode back, packed my bike into a box and headed with my family to JFK Airport. After an overnight flight to London, I did much the same as I’d done in New York in reverse. We headed to our temporary accommodation, I unpacked the bike and I rode to my employer’s London office.</span></div><b id="docs-internal-guid-08ad4835-28a3-bf36-adfa-7ad3e02ad66f" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xL1cD3LX1cg/WWJ4tayn1bI/AAAAAAAADRw/G7kGhqYQln83nFB0ItJl80ESJNJcCejKQCLcBGAs/s1600/Manhattan%2BBridge%2Bcyclists.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xL1cD3LX1cg/WWJ4tayn1bI/AAAAAAAADRw/G7kGhqYQln83nFB0ItJl80ESJNJcCejKQCLcBGAs/s320/Manhattan%2BBridge%2Bcyclists.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A traffic jam on the Manhattan Bridge bike lane: a route I last<br />took a year ago last week.</td></tr></tbody></table><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That first ride in London after <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/a-tour-of-tolerant-diversity-horrors-of.html">four years in New York</a> was the start of a year in which it’s been a great privilege to rediscover the joys of getting around the UK by bicycle. Some of the more than 5,000 miles I’ve ridden have been for leisure. But I’ve also been rediscovering newspaper reporting by bicycle. I took my bike with me on a train to Manchester early on May 23, the morning after the appalling <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/d150d9e6-3f40-11e7-9d56-25f963e998b2">Manchester Arena bombing</a>. I rode <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/e156b1ae-4aa7-11e7-a3f4-c742b9791d43">around Bradford</a> during the general election campaign. On the night of June 3, I tried to cycle to London Bridge to investigate reports of an <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/9e1cd794-4a0a-11e7-919a-1e14ce4af89b">apparent terror attack</a>, only to be stopped by panicky armed police officers ordering me to turn around.</span></div><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet, as my enthusiasm for getting about by bike has reached still greater heights, I’ve found my enthusiasm for writing about it heading in the other direction. Writing on the issue that doesn’t fit the accepted narratives of people who oppose or support cycling provokes extraordinary levels of anger, I’ve discovered.</span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BkoIhd0Wi60/WWJ8hZoQmyI/AAAAAAAADSA/Q6ZfU71gw-Ac5j9JzYW35J0qgd-Up9yigCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_0857.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BkoIhd0Wi60/WWJ8hZoQmyI/AAAAAAAADSA/Q6ZfU71gw-Ac5j9JzYW35J0qgd-Up9yigCLcBGAs/s320/IMG_0857.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">London from Parliament Hill: a joy to<br />rediscover by bike</td></tr></tbody></table><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some of my posts have excited hostility from opponents of cycling. Two of my Facebook friends were so furiously resistant to the idea that drivers <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/a-peeved-pedestrian-riders-broken.html">pose more danger</a> to pedestrians than pavement (sidewalk) cyclists that they’re no longer my Facebook friends. But several others have inspired near-apoplexy among my fellow cyclists. The nadir of this was when one of the UK’s most respected cycle campaigners attributed my previous post to my alleged “cyclophobia”.</span></div><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The problem is partly, I recognise, that this blog has always rather uncomfortably straddled twin roles as a platform for campaigning and philosophising. I’ve long believed, on one hand, that the bicycle is an excellent means of urban transportation, hoped to see more people riding bikes and supported the building of facilities that will make that possible. I’m personally slightly fanatical about trying to get around by bike whenever I can. When travelling with the prime minister to this weekend’s G20 summit, for example, I tried to find out if there was a way to park my bike at Heathrow Airport’s Royal Suite (there sadly wasn’t).</span></div><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RUuH-ZGfICA/WWJ5m5X2zzI/AAAAAAAADR0/xIcNknHCHiAuZkapbOQgPbiqlEN9ToPxACLcBGAs/s1600/Me%2Bat%2BKing%2527s%2BCross.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RUuH-ZGfICA/WWJ5m5X2zzI/AAAAAAAADR0/xIcNknHCHiAuZkapbOQgPbiqlEN9ToPxACLcBGAs/s320/Me%2Bat%2BKing%2527s%2BCross.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me as I prepared to take my bike to Bradford<br />for a general election piece: this is what<br />a cyclophobe looks like, apparently</td></tr></tbody></table><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But I’ve also spent nearly 10 of the last 14 years as a reporter writing about transport issues. I’m used to meeting the people facing the daunting challenge of devising transport systems that fulfill the needs of people that want to use buses and trains as well as bicycles. While I’ve sought to frame my pieces here in the context of a cyclist’s experience, I’ve ended up writing a fair amount with the perspective of someone caught up in the wider transport debate.</span></div><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The bottom line is that it’s become so exhausting dealing with hostile reactions to my blogposts that it’s detracting from my enjoyment of cycling, rather than adding to it. I’m consequently making this my last post on this blog.</span></div><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As with any break-up, I should explain the ways it’s not you but I who’s at fault. On April 18, I moved from writing about transport to covering politics full-time. The shift has meant both that my head’s been a lot less full of transport policy than it used to be and that my time has been consumed with other things. I’ve been thinking about, say, the messages of the main parties’ <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/bad5c4ba-30db-11e7-9555-23ef563ecf9a">campaign literature</a> in the recent snap UK general election rather than how patterns of demand for transport in London are changing.</span></div><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While it was a joy for the piece on campaign literature to ride my bike to the north London constituency of Hampstead &amp; Kilburn to research it, my mind was dwelling on politics as I headed home. I might once have pondered the relative merits of Royal College St’s segregated bike paths and the quiet, backstreet routes I used elsewhere.</span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-t7KWtr-yKwc/WWJ6TrQMkQI/AAAAAAAADR4/gTLftzReXHMsmJrG6y0LDheUDmvwvdjXgCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_0782.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-t7KWtr-yKwc/WWJ6TrQMkQI/AAAAAAAADR4/gTLftzReXHMsmJrG6y0LDheUDmvwvdjXgCLcBGAs/s320/IMG_0782.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Election literature I picked up after riding to Hampstead:<br />a new preoccupation.</td></tr></tbody></table><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My enthusiasm for blogging hasn’t been enhanced by the sheer intensity of the UK’s recent news flow. Since April 18, the country has not only experienced an extraordinary general election but two terror attacks - both of which I’ve been involved in covering - and the tragic Grenfell Tower fire. Issues around cycle infrastructure remain important but have felt less pressing in these circumstances.</span></div><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet a row I had with two fellow cyclists on June 16 encapsulates a wearying tendency on both the roads and the internet that has played a significant part in putting me off. I encountered the pair near the exit from Kensington Gardens, in west London, as I rushed to Kensington Town Hall to cover the building’s <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/880cab5e-5299-11e7-bfb8-997009366969">occupation</a> by protesters angry at Kensington &amp; Chelsea council’s mishandling of the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire. On a section of the route where cyclists were asked to dismount, I did so. But, being in a hurry, when I passed the dismount sign at the other end of the narrow section, I got back on my bike and tried to continue my journey.</span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XBArLgdoDBU/WWJ7eEDPksI/AAAAAAAADR8/yBPWrFeAUG8zLGXaALAjBARrE2V0GJyDACLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_0843.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XBArLgdoDBU/WWJ7eEDPksI/AAAAAAAADR8/yBPWrFeAUG8zLGXaALAjBARrE2V0GJyDACLcBGAs/s320/IMG_0843.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Police stop protesters from entering Kensington Town Hall:<br />I had a telling experience en route to this event.</td></tr></tbody></table><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The two other cyclists were having none of it. Having failed to spot the signs telling us to remount, they kept pushing their bikes, two abreast, down the middle of the path, deliberately obstructing me from getting past. When I finally got past, one of them said to me, “Try reading the signs next time”. It immediately struck me how common such behaviour is both on the roads and online. People who are sure of their own position are prone to assuming those who act differently from them are acting out of either stupidity or malice. People have been free in attributing elements of my posts on here to both.</span></div><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The frustration is all the greater because much of the anger has been motivated by my determination to make clear a single point on which most London cycle campaigners have chosen to ignore what seems to me crystal-clear evidence. It’s become conventional wisdom among London cycle campaigners to insist that the construction and opening of the east-west, north-south and Vauxhall Bridge cycleways last year had no effect on <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/a-smug-expectation-messy-reality-and.html">motor vehicle congestion</a>. It’s become fashionable, among other things, to blame London’s evident growing traffic jams on extra numbers of for-hire vehicles, rather than the effects of the reduced road capacity.</span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6bixWTIjXY4/WWJ9d3vxLxI/AAAAAAAADSE/ZtKxep5KH60mAv4tJSgFUwcyY5rI8WWFACLcBGAs/s1600/Blackfriars%2BBridge.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6bixWTIjXY4/WWJ9d3vxLxI/AAAAAAAADSE/ZtKxep5KH60mAv4tJSgFUwcyY5rI8WWFACLcBGAs/s320/Blackfriars%2BBridge.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The North-South Superhighway on Blackfriars Bridge,<br />before the latest barriers went up: useful, but not quite<br />the way that Transport for London spins it.</td></tr></tbody></table><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet there remains, it seems to me, no room for honest doubt about what’s going on in central London. Motor traffic volumes for the most recently reported quarter were <a href="http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tlrn-performance-report-q4-2016-17.pdf">down 3.4 per cent year-on-year</a>, while average traffic speeds in the same period declined 5.4 per cent. The picture of growing congestion resulting from a shrinking of the road network’s capacity is obvious to nearly everyone outside cycle campaigning who looks at London traffic issues. That the building of the cycle superhighways has contributed significantly to the congestion is obvious from Transport for London’s <a href="http://content.tfl.gov.uk/pic-161130-07-cycle-quietways.pdf">report on implementation</a> of the Cycle Superhighways, which shows eastbound journey times in the peak along the Embankment are up by 15 minutes.</span></div><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The reactions I’ve received to pointing to these clear, unequivocal figures vary. A handful of people have thanked me for being willing to follow the data wherever they point. But the vast majority have involved some version of accusing me of stupidity, ill-will or a failure of imagination. Many people point to one of Transport for London’s arguments in favour of the cycle tracks - that Blackfriars Bridge now at rush hour carries more people than it did before the cycle tracks were installed. That, I think, misses the point about what’s uniquely useful about London’s roads - that much of the traffic now doesn’t involve passenger transport but deliveries, including traffic to and from the Crossrail building work, supplies for housebuilders and even the material needed to construct new segregated cycle superhighways. It also misses the point that many London roads are now congested and busy with motor traffic all day, while the peaks on the cycle tracks are far shorter.</span></div><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Other critics have suggested that congestion is somehow inevitable - an argument that doesn’t fit with its having been successfully reduced by the introduction of the congestion charge in 2003. Some have welcomed the congestion because it will force people to take up cycling - an argument that I suggest won’t be much comfort to a relative of anyone stuck in an ambulance trying to get to hospital. Others have suggested that delays to buses - on which there are 6.5m daily trips - are a price worth paying for improving conditions for cyclists.</span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IkGRCdzZYUU/WDIFbqAn_bI/AAAAAAAACu8/om1ELqDcZhA0sh4D7WndSR6xCz0uYJkIQCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/IMG_0238.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IkGRCdzZYUU/WDIFbqAn_bI/AAAAAAAACu8/om1ELqDcZhA0sh4D7WndSR6xCz0uYJkIQCPcBGAYYCw/s320/IMG_0238.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My son on the east-west Cycle Superhighway:<br />finally, central London routes that are<br />a joy to use with children</td></tr></tbody></table><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I remain <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/a-prosecutors-phone-call-remembrance-of.html">delighted </a>that the cycle superhighways, which I use daily and which have made it far easier for me to get around central London by bike on my own and with my children, have been built. I am excited daily by the huge numbers of cyclists that I see heading down Clapham Road or over Vauxhall Bridge on my commute. But I continue to worry that, as long as so many London cycling activists cling to views about the dynamics of London’s congestion that defy the evidence, progress on further improving London’s cycling conditions will be slow. Some long-standing transport professionals whom I know - one of whom has been a long-term champion of cycling - now fear to discuss London cycling because of the poisonous atmosphere around this debate.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I would much prefer cycling activists to accept that the superhighways have exacerbated congestion that was already worsening. I'd hope people would then campaign for a more sophisticated, <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/a-past-mayor-miserable-blogiversary-and.html">London-wide road-charging system</a> that would deter driving in London far more effectively than the present congestion charge.</span></div><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anyone who begins from the starting point of believing the evidence of the statistics about trends in central London traffic is generally branded an unreliable cyclist-hater, however. There's normally some insinuation that the person is in the pocket of some sinister vested interest. It was, needless to say, in a discussion over London congestion statistics that I was accused of cyclophobia.</span></div><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My clearest conclusion after a year back in the UK is that my efforts to analyse what’s going on around me and argue for my approach are doomed. I’ve made my case to scores of commenters on this blog and to still more people on Twitter and Facebook. My efforts have generated far more tension and unhappiness than they have understanding. It’s time to draw the inevitable conclusion from these failures and to stop trying.</span></div><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are sensations and experiences I’d like to express. I still enjoy remembering how Kennington Park Road, one of my regular haunts, was <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/what-have-romans-ever-done-for-us-well.html">originally a Roman road</a>. I like to think of how Roman soldiers marched there millennia ago. I’ve got faster at cycling over the past year, partly because I’ve lost 15kg. I’ve gained a new, childlike appreciation for the joys of speed on a bike. On the morning after the Manchester bombing, I left home before 6am and experienced for the first time in years the strange excitement of riding through <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/a-soho-epiphany-south-london-mugging.html">dawn-time London</a> as the corner shop shutters clank open.</span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UuvzxZyxtJ0/WWKAWHziKbI/AAAAAAAADSI/K976kxGatrQj6bVPpxkxR1H3O6t597s9gCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_0730.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UuvzxZyxtJ0/WWKAWHziKbI/AAAAAAAADSI/K976kxGatrQj6bVPpxkxR1H3O6t597s9gCLcBGAs/s320/IMG_0730.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My daughter and our bikes on the Emirates Air Line:<br />she's played a role in some of my fondest cycling memories.</td></tr></tbody></table><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some of my strongest feelings involve riding with my daughter, who’s now 15. She has become far fitter as a cyclist, having started cycling daily to and from school. Eight days ago, I was rushing home with her by bike from the Tate Britain when we came on a group of adult cyclists who were riding more slowly than we were. In its own way, it was one of my most perfectly satisfying experiences on a bike to look round, ask her, “Are you ready?” and watch as she accelerated smoothly past them, a picture of confidence on her smart red road bike.</span></div><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But, while I’ve enjoyed in the past mining such experiences to make points on this blog, it’s time now to work on a different discipline. I’m going to try harder to enjoy the daily joys of riding a bicycle in the moment, while forgetting the frustrations more quickly. I thank those who’ve read this blog regularly over the years and trust that you will nurture that joy a little more too.</span></div></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2017/07/a-move-back-two-angry-path-blockers-and.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-3442605363866395931Sun, 23 Apr 2017 19:17:00 +00002017-04-28T12:49:46.609-04:00assumptionsCycling in Londondriversfilter bubblespedestrianssocial mediastreet communicationWaterloo BridgeAn angry man on a pavement, a rash of misunderstandings - and why I'll be seeking to bridge the gap<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>One morning in mid-March, because I was running late for a meeting, I opted to ride across Waterloo Bridge, expecting it to be the fastest route, despite its being a hostile environment for cyclists. Only just over half way across, however, I found myself stuck behind a queue of buses stretching all the way to the Strand. Resting my foot on the kerb, I peered down the long, red, double-deck wall, wondering what I should do.<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-T1cMonnG_gg/WPz03IBtXkI/AAAAAAAADGc/8hcfbV-UTxwjFkpIUoM1NM_44ylXAvHzgCEw/s1600/Screenshot%2B2017-04-23%2Bat%2B19.38.42.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-T1cMonnG_gg/WPz03IBtXkI/AAAAAAAADGc/8hcfbV-UTxwjFkpIUoM1NM_44ylXAvHzgCEw/s320/Screenshot%2B2017-04-23%2Bat%2B19.38.42.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Waterloo Bridge, approaching Covent Garden (c Google):<br />scene of a run-in that briefly enraged me,<br />before opening my metaphorical eyes</td></tr></tbody></table><br />As I did so, a passing pedestrian decided to lecture me on the basis of what he thought I was doing, not my actual actions.<br /><br />“Hey, mate!” he shouted in my direction, before pointing down at the pavement (or sidewalk, North American readers). “This here is a footway!”<br /><br />I tried shouting after him to explain I had not the slightest intention of riding my bike down the pavement, as he assumed I planned to do. But he was already off, an air of self-righteousness buzzing around him like flies round a smelly cow.<br /><br />It was one of several times recently when I’ve come across people making judgements about people’s behaviour on the roads based on their perceptions of what was happening, rather than the reality. I’ve had to pull out of my son’s front tyre a tack that had been left, presumably deliberately, on a cycle path to thwart someone’s idea of bad, irresponsible cyclists. I’ve rowed with an Uber driver who thought I was being unreasonable by riding down the middle of a narrow street to stop him from dangerously overtaking me and my family. I’ve seen pedestrians pause as I slowed to a stop at traffic lights, apparently assuming I would breeze on through.<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-s7sU96dtfJg/WPz27WQxRKI/AAAAAAAADGw/wtK-0RBJE38Iyx19djvQWqZap8E1_zchACLcB/s1600/Blackfriars%2BRoad%2Btack.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-s7sU96dtfJg/WPz27WQxRKI/AAAAAAAADGw/wtK-0RBJE38Iyx19djvQWqZap8E1_zchACLcB/s320/Blackfriars%2BRoad%2Btack.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The tack that caused my son's puncture:<br />anti-cyclist prejudice made manifest</td></tr></tbody></table><br />These and other incidents have all made me realise how hard it is to change attitudes about events on the road. As far as the angry man on Waterloo Bridge is concerned, he went away having prevented a cyclist from riding on the pavement, an event that can only have reinforced his self-righteousness. The people who scattered the tacks on the cycle track will have assumed they thwarted some lycra-clad cycle commuter and won’t have seen my son’s anxiety over the incident. The Uber driver gained no understanding of why I was riding in the middle of the road so will only think cyclists more unreasonable. The wary pedestrians will assume I’m the exception, not the rule.<br /><br />But the incidents have also made me think about how I react when I’m out on the streets myself. Time and again, as I assess the risks of some situation, I look round to work out how much of a danger a particular driver’s behaviour is likely to represent. I notice that I retreat into the basest assumptions about how people of a particular race or gender will behave or judge a person solely on his or her choice of car. The recognition has impressed on me yet again the vital importance of getting to know the widest possible range of people and understanding their views. Yet both on the roads and in politics - which it’s now my day job to cover - groups appear to be growing more polarised and less apt to talk to each other, rather than less.<br /><br />At the heart of the on-street misunderstandings is a paradox of road use that has struck me repeatedly over the years. It feels like a private experience to use a street - particularly when driving in a car. But one’s in fact engaged in a very <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/a-wary-pedestrian-getting-metaphysical.html">complex social interaction</a>. It’s vital to anticipate how others are going to act and that people broadly adhere to the expected ways of behaving, even if those are not the same as the formal rules of the road.<br /><br />In the US and UK, where cycling is a minority means of getting about, this creates a problem for people who ride bikes. Very few drivers or pedestrians can picture themselves in a cyclist’s place on the road or understand the multiple pressures on a cyclist on a busy road or mixed-use path or some other place where <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/obstructive-pedestrians-crass-video-and.html">conflict between users</a> arises. This only exacerbates, it seems to me, people’s tendency to stereotype cyclists’ behaviour. The wincing pedestrians at traffic lights are a case in point. While they perceive cyclists as inherently unlikely to obey traffic lights, I’m far more struck by how many cyclists obey signals whose placing and timing is generally governed by another mode’s needs.<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-thEAPXi5Oms/WPz4dQxpA3I/AAAAAAAADHI/AFpZmegLUMM1N8w3qFywsCJQODswTff1gCLcB/s1600/IMG_0699.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-thEAPXi5Oms/WPz4dQxpA3I/AAAAAAAADHI/AFpZmegLUMM1N8w3qFywsCJQODswTff1gCLcB/s320/IMG_0699.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A crash on Clapham Road: road use is such a complex<br />interaction it's surprising such scenes remain relatively rear.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />The challenges are all the greater because people have to make decisions on the roads fast. Many of my own reactions, I’m aware, come from bits of my brain that work so instinctively I’m barely aware of them. I’m startled into fear by the sudden movement of a car in my peripheral vision, much as my distant ancestors must have been hard-wired to jump at the movement in the corner of their eyes that signified a prowling bear or wolf. Once those fight-or-flight responses are aroused, I tend not to revert quickly to my normal polite, reasonable self.<br /><br />On top of all this, most people, I think, carry the mental scars of past bad experiences, which they recall far more readily than good things. It’s easy to miss how much that shapes one’s perceptions. A friend from New York, for example, cycled in London last summer and raved about how she saw no-one driving while using their mobile phone, comparing that favourably with New York. She had yet to build up my experience of spotting drivers using mobile phones in London. For me, by contrast, each time I see someone’s driving while using a mobile, it slots into a convenient mental envelope - “yet more evidence that dangerous mobile phone use is endemic among London drivers”.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-K-YEdr1QR9Y/WPz7L55hg-I/AAAAAAAADIE/dVnQRW5hU0wvVXGxwSpG_OdhS7088D2zQCLcB/s1600/IMG_0740%2B%25281%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-K-YEdr1QR9Y/WPz7L55hg-I/AAAAAAAADIE/dVnQRW5hU0wvVXGxwSpG_OdhS7088D2zQCLcB/s320/IMG_0740%2B%25281%2529.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A clear message to drivers about driving<br />around cyclists: all too rare - and all too<br />badly needed</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br />The net result of all these human foibles, it seems to me, is that nearly every road-user travels around a mess of prejudices, dangerous assumptions and hurt feelings. It’s hardly surprisingly, consequently, that myths about road user behaviour seem particularly persistent and <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/why-some-people-get-angry-with-cyclists.html">prejudices against cyclists</a> seem particularly hard to shift. People’s assumptions are shored up not only by what they see going on around them but by the far greater number of things they think they see going on. My apparent determination to plough down a busy pavement on a Monday morning probably did more to reinforce the prejudices of the Angry Man of Waterloo Bridge far more than any encounter with a real pavement cyclist would have done.<br /><br />Yet, however urgent the need to bridge this chasm of comprehension, the gap seems currently to be growing ever wider. Whereas debates about roads policy might once have been played out mainly through newspaper articles or in other media that had a range of contributors and readers, social media such as twitter seem to let narrow groups reinforce each other’s prejudices. Drivers’ twitter accounts often <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/free-speech-tweeted-threats-and-angry.html">bristle with violent anger</a> against cyclists, frequently reinforced by other, like-minded people. Cycling social and other media, meanwhile, are prone to a self-congratulatory tone and, sometimes, scorn for anyone using any other transport mode, including buses.<br /><br />I was particularly disappointed recently to read a column by Ashok Sinha, chief executive of the London Cycling Campaign, lambasting those of us who <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/a-past-mayor-miserable-blogiversary-and.html">point to the evidence</a> linking <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/a-smug-expectation-messy-reality-and.html">worsening motor traffic congestion</a> with the building of London’s segregated Cycle Superhighways for spreading “fake news”. It would be far harder for this conviction to maintain its current hold on London’s cycling advocates if more of them spent time with transport planners and advocates from outside the activist community. Even planners who are well-disposed towards cycling and want to see cycling levels rise go slack-jawed in amazement at activists’ reluctance to accept the clear, substantial evidence that the new facilities have played a significant role in worsening congestion for motor vehicles.<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JeU66gEOHaw/WPz5aLlNFpI/AAAAAAAADHw/rqtKK6v735gos6Ac9Wl4mY8DQEI_ojoewCEw/s1600/NSCSH.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JeU66gEOHaw/WPz5aLlNFpI/AAAAAAAADHw/rqtKK6v735gos6Ac9Wl4mY8DQEI_ojoewCEw/s320/NSCSH.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A busy North-South Cycle Superhighway,<br />next to a congested road: my views about<br />the relationship between the two are<br />"fake news," apparently.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Yet I understand all too well why the echo chambers get sealed off from outside noises. Two of my Facebook friends would, for a while, respond every time I complained about dangerous drivers by complaining about the alleged danger posed by cyclists on pavements. When even a blogpost <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/a-peeved-pedestrian-riders-broken.html">analysing the evidence</a> on this point failed to persuade them, I took, I admit, the path of least resistance. I unfriended them, making my experience of Facebook less stressful but simultaneously less diverse.<br /><br />The problem is far from confined to cycling advocacy. This past week, I started a new, temporary day job as a political correspondent. It’s impossible to avoid the idea that politics in both the UK and US have grown polarised partly because people have so little experience of communicating with people with a different point of view. The stubborn insistence of some supporters of Jeremy Corbyn that he can lead the Labour Party to a general election victory makes far more sense if one imagine how information flows to Corbyn’s hardest-line supporters. Since most presumably have twitter feeds and Facebook timelines full of people agreeing with them, it must be easy to assume that the opinion polls - which show the party 20 percentage points or so behind the Conservatives - are some nefarious plot.<br /><br />The widespread nature of the problems, meanwhile, means I can’t offer an easy solution. I wanted to put the Angry Man of Waterloo Bridge straight but I couldn’t catch up with him. If the gulfs of understanding that separate multiple groups in contemporary society were easy to cross, misunderstanding would be far less rife than it currently is.<br /><br />The angry man’s reaction was, nevertheless, a useful reminder of how easy it is to slip into assuming the worst about another person and failing to question how one’s interpreting a situation. I will seek in future to be slower to anger, less ready to assume the worst about others and more ready to explain my own position politely and calmly.</div></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2017/04/an-angry-man-on-pavement-rash-of.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-4481855926854644685Sun, 26 Mar 2017 19:40:00 +00002017-04-06T09:45:27.935-04:00Boston Bombingcars and violencecycle lanescycling in BirminghamHagley RoadislamismKhalid MasoodMichael Zehaf-BibeauOmar MateenOrlandoOttawaSparkbrookterrorismWestminster BridgeA chance remark, a horror attack and why cars and violence are so closely linked<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">During a brief stop-off on Wednesday morning at <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/general-theory-of-cycling-motorists-and.html">Brixton Cycles</a>, I fell into the kind of chit-chat that’s a customary part of any healthy relationship with a cycle retailer. Recalling that the staff member serving me had previously complained about cycling conditions on Westminster Bridge, I remarked to him on the news that Transport for London is due to start installing protected bike paths on either side of the crossing.<br /><br />“It’s good news about Westminster Bridge, isn’t it?” I’d asked.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QkQlVlCKS6s/WDH-18FgUWI/AAAAAAAACt8/74ATDgW4zpkj2RNbJa7n5VstgRcWzjpfACPcB/s1600/IMG_0385.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QkQlVlCKS6s/WDH-18FgUWI/AAAAAAAACt8/74ATDgW4zpkj2RNbJa7n5VstgRcWzjpfACPcB/s320/IMG_0385.JPG" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The parliamentary clock tower:<br />tourist icon turned site of terror</td></tr></tbody></table><div>The comment was to appear darkly ironic within hours, after Khalid Masood, a convert to Islam, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/d4b464ec-1199-11e7-b0c1-37e417ee6c76">deliberately drove</a> a vehicle at pedestrians on the bridge, killing three, before fatally attacking a policeman guarding the Houses of Parliament. Masood was himself fatally shot following his attack.<br /><br />I’ve had particular cause to ponder my comment, however, because following the attack I was called away from my normal reporting duties onto the effort to try to identify what led Masood to commit mass murder in the name of his islamist ideology. It was the latest of a large number of extremist attacks I’ve covered stretching back nearly 20 years to the 1998 Omagh bombing, which killed 29 people in a town in Northern Ireland.<br /><br />As I tried to work out key details of the killer’s life, it struck me how many of the incidents I’ve covered have had some connection with motor vehicles. Two days before another islamist, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/4876e152-5a7c-11e4-8625-00144feab7de#slide0">killed a guard</a> outside Canada’s parliament in October 2014, one of Zehaf-Bibeau’s associates had <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/canadian-terrorism-alphabet-city-hit.html">deliberately used a car</a> to run over two Canadian soldiers, killing one. In the aftermath of the 2013 Boston bombing, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan, who had planted the two bombs, hijacked a car a went on a <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/boston-bikelessness-and-how-cycling.html">high-speed chase</a> through the Boston suburbs. Tamerlan died during the subsequent gun battle when his brother accidentally drove the car over him. The Omagh bomb was planted in a car.<br /><br />The Westminster attack follows two other recent serious attacks by motor vehicles. In July last year, a driver killed 86 people in Nice by driving a truck at them. In December, an attacker killed 12 people in Berlin with a truck.<br /><br />The motor vehicle is an ideal weapon, it occurred to me, not only because it is so familiar and humdrum an item but also because it provides the dehumanising distance that’s a vital aspect of many weapons. It’s easier psychologically as well as practically to kill people via the familiar action of pressing down on the accelerator pedal than if one is looking them in the eye and throttling them.<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m2T4xeEsABU/WNgXETdrlMI/AAAAAAAADCI/ZJmZ-F59100I3UG6cQQ_j8e7Ei7_N-4_gCLcB/s1600/IMG_0702.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m2T4xeEsABU/WNgXETdrlMI/AAAAAAAADCI/ZJmZ-F59100I3UG6cQQ_j8e7Ei7_N-4_gCLcB/s320/IMG_0702.JPG" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">The site of a raid on Hagley Road, Birmingham:</span><br />one of many parts of the city made more miserable<br />by its dependence on a deadly dangerous transport mode</td></tr></tbody></table><br />As I rode my bike around Birmingham trying to make sense of Masood’s act, however, I had a further thought. It was impossible to miss how much of Birmingham’s landscape was blighted by the presence of sweeping dual carriageways full of high-speed motor vehicles. It was, in particular, a miserable experience spending time by Hagley Road, the six-lane thoroughfare next to which Masood seems to have spent the last few months of his life. While no-one but Masood bears responsibility for his appalling crime, it is unsurprising that cities criss-crossed by such barriers to walking and cycling end up feeling like atomised, impersonal places where it’s hard to make human connections with strangers.<br /><br />None of this should minimise the horror of Wednesday’s events. There is something uniquely shocking about seeing coverage of such gruesome events in a place that one knows intimately. Masood’s attack ended on a cycle track down the side of parliament that I use frequently, most recently the day immediately before the attack. I spend a reasonable amount of time around Westminster and had been invited to an event in the Palace of Westminster last Tuesday, though I hadn’t attended.<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fw6cfGLxjRY/WDIDlqhkWvI/AAAAAAAACu8/0MdXwuVj89g4TBpVX2FsQjRtK9eWZbt0gCPcB/s1600/IMG_0192.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fw6cfGLxjRY/WDIDlqhkWvI/AAAAAAAACu8/0MdXwuVj89g4TBpVX2FsQjRtK9eWZbt0gCPcB/s320/IMG_0192.JPG" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cyclists wait by the Palace of Westminster: a familiar sight,<br />easily transformed by a moment's violenc</td></tr></tbody></table><br />It is an appalling shock to be reminded of how quickly a single, malicious act can transform such a setting. One of the injured people, for instance, had to be rescued from the Thames. It had never occurred to me that a person might be thrown by a car over the parapet and into the river. I often roll my eyes as I ride through Parliament Square at how tourists take delight in simple things like being photographed in a British telephone booth or pretending to hold the parliamentary clock tower between their fingers. I will regard the scene differently in future knowing that people engaged in such goofy sight-seeing were mowed down because of one man’s misdirected anger and confused ideology.<br /><br />There is, it seems to me, an especial horror that the deaths and injuries that Masood caused were a result of a deliberate act. In the aftermath of the attack, some people have sought to relativise the attack by pointing out that the attack’s death toll of four was smaller than the five or so average daily deaths on Great Britain’s roads. But it must deepen the pain of the bereaved to know that their loved ones’ deaths resulted from someone’s deciding they were expendable, rather than from negligence, however blameworthy. There is a clear, well-established legal and moral difference between a premeditated and deliberate act and other deadly driving.<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MNcm18YVXNk/WNgX-Q_sHsI/AAAAAAAADCQ/f_QIG6wAz8wPqxEZY3Ipez_8HjlFDK8pACLcB/s1600/IMG_0699.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MNcm18YVXNk/WNgX-Q_sHsI/AAAAAAAADCQ/f_QIG6wAz8wPqxEZY3Ipez_8HjlFDK8pACLcB/s320/IMG_0699.JPG" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption">A car crash I encountered on Thursday morning:<br />a reminder that automotive mayhem is a constant, not an exception&nbsp;</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Nevertheless, motor vehicle terrorism is effective precisely because it can be so hard to distinguish the start of a deliberate, pre-meditated terror attack with a car from normal bad driving. When Masood first started revving his engine and speeding up on Wednesday afternoon, his behaviour can’t have seemed that different from the deliberately <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/a-cheshire-epiphany-cheap-driving-and.html">aggressive driving</a> I encounter on a daily basis in London. I see countless drivers’ speeding up to grossly excessive speeds to express their momentary fury over having been held up, often by me on my bicycle.<br /><br />The closer the interest one takes in road safety, the less removed from day-to-day driving an attack like Masood’s appears. In December, the driver of a Ferrari supercar was racing another driver down a street in Battersea, near my home in south London, when he lost control, <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/six-people-injured-after-ferrari-mounts-pavement-and-crashes-in-battersea-a3418211.html">mounted a pavement </a>and hit six school pupils, including one who was thrown over a bridge abutment onto a car below. This past Saturday evening, the police were forced to clarify they didn’t suspect terrorism after a driver <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/essex-road-crash-fifth-arrest-after-car-ploughs-into-revellers-outside-islington-pub-a3499561.html">ploughed onto a pavement</a> in Islington, north London, at 50 mph, hitting a group of people queuing to get into a pub. A car combines huge destructive power and ease of use in exactly the same dangerous way as a gun. While there is a moral difference between being willing to race a powerful sports car down a public road around pedestrians and deliberately seeking to kill people, the difference is not as big as the racers would like to think.<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KsytkyzVQp8/WNgYXOcNc0I/AAAAAAAADCU/qAFkiyVGQlEb6jiG4100aaLp4uB6mJB1wCLcB/s1600/IMG_0704.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KsytkyzVQp8/WNgYXOcNc0I/AAAAAAAADCU/qAFkiyVGQlEb6jiG4100aaLp4uB6mJB1wCLcB/s320/IMG_0704.JPG" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption">Sparkbrook: an area with problems, but less blighted<br />than many plusher parts</td></tr></tbody></table><br />But I was struck anew by how pervasive the dehumanising effects of motor vehicle dominance are when I headed to Birmingham on Thursday to research <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/c20027e8-0ff3-11e7-a88c-50ba212dce4d">Masood’s last days</a>. When I first headed west from Moor Street station to Hagley Road, I struggled to find a viable cycle route and found myself on one-way streets wholly dominated by unbroken streams of fast-moving cars. When I finally reached the miserable stretch of Hagley Road where Masood lived latterly, I discovered an area blighted to an extraordinary degree by Birmingham’s planners’ decision to base the city’s transport around private cars. When I headed off to the traditional heart of the city’s Muslim communities, in south-east Birmingham, I encountered still more dystopian roads.<br /><br />It seemed to me impossible to ride a bike on the fast-moving, six-lane “Queensway” system that carries the vast bulk of the traffic. In places, I resorted, shamefully, to riding down the pavement. The only consolation was that my decision jeopardised barely anyone since so few people walk in such a hostile environment.<br /><br />One of the ironies of my trip was that the rougher, poorer areas such as Sparkbrook that have produced many of Birmingham’s jihadis were far less unpleasant for a cyclist than plusher areas such as Edgbaston. The narrow streets of brick, terraced houses in the poorer areas at least kept vehicle speeds lower. Even in these areas, however, cars crowded pavements and clogged the streets. Residents clearly preferred their cars to the buses that were trapped in the same traffic.<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HMHZhumJB74/V3pqhBab8fI/AAAAAAAACRU/U-1ttDfRtowu-sD8O3iULRW4OWtFV0_cgCPcB/s1600/Reporters%2Bin%2BOrlando.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HMHZhumJB74/V3pqhBab8fI/AAAAAAAACRU/U-1ttDfRtowu-sD8O3iULRW4OWtFV0_cgCPcB/s320/Reporters%2Bin%2BOrlando.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Orlando's Pulse nightclub: scene of a previous horror</td></tr></tbody></table><br />There are, of course, multiple, complex reasons for the spread of violent jihadism. The more I’ve learned about Khalid Masood, for example, the more I’ve been struck by how his act last Wednesday seems largely to have been an expression of nihilistic rage, rather than a defined ideology. I was struck by the obvious similarities with the personal story of Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people last June at a nightclub in Orlando, another incident on which I <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/a-tour-of-tolerant-diversity-horrors-of.html">personally reported</a>.<br /><br />Yet my experience this past week in both London and Birmingham has led me to think that societies where people shut themselves off in cars will always be wary and fearful. A car provides a near-perfect shield for the violent, obscuring their faces and making their intentions harder to read. Like most cyclists, I know the terrifying readiness of many drivers to point their vehicles at cyclists and force their way past. The ultimate threat is a violent one: if you get in my way, I’m more than ready to drive over you.<br /><br />While there is more work, clearly, to be done on weeding out Islamist ideology and shutting down Jihadi networks, it’s also obvious that western societies have for far too long shrugged at letting drivers wield deadly power with minimal accountability. That danger has seemed until now for most people an inevitable yet unavoidable side effect of cars’ flexibility and convenience as a means of transport. But no other killing machine as potent as private cars is given such free rein in most European countries as motor vehicles are. The logic of a renewed effort to boost alternatives becomes still more compelling as horrors like Thursday’s mount.<br /><br /><i> The views in this blogpost are entirely my own private reflections and are unrelated to my work for my employer.</i></div></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2017/03/a-chance-remark-horror-attack-and-why.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-8970380107510739514Thu, 02 Mar 2017 18:03:00 +00002017-03-05T11:05:22.305-05:00BrexitChesterChris GraylingcongestionDulwichfuel dutyroad pricingtraffic volumestransport policyA Cheshire epiphany, cheap driving - and why Brexit means no respite from clogged roads<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">It’s the kind of scene that’s probably familiar to anyone who’s tried recently cycling in the large swathes of the UK where the motor car is the dominant transport mode. On Sunday, February 12, I tried to cycle a short distance along the A548 road on the outskirts of <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/a-long-ish-ride-confusing-signs-and-why.html">Chester,</a> the kind of road that a couple of decades ago on a Sunday probably wouldn’t have had enough motor traffic to feel seriously intimidating. After only a few hundred metres, having suffered a succession of high-speed, close passes, I felt forced to retreat to a cycle path I’d spotted on the far side of the road. But, once I’d dismounted to cross, I found myself stranded for several minutes as a stream of high-speed vehicles raced past me.<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RGAbDLSMfps/WLhYBSYbvAI/AAAAAAAAC-A/BdDFZ8QRxOMB2ARExkbiFby0j7LR1-vNwCLcB/s1600/Leighton%2BRoad.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RGAbDLSMfps/WLhYBSYbvAI/AAAAAAAAC-A/BdDFZ8QRxOMB2ARExkbiFby0j7LR1-vNwCLcB/s320/Leighton%2BRoad.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A car speeds down a lane in rural Cheshire: an increasingly<br />common sight as fuel duty tips the scales in favour<br />of travel by car</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>It’s a scene that’s growing steadily more common. <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/provisional-road-traffic-estimates-great-britain-january-2016-to-december-2016">Provisional figures</a> show there was more traffic in 2016 on Great Britain’s roads than in any previous year and that traffic volumes rose 1.2 per cent on 2015. The rise is all the more impressive for occurring against a backdrop of <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/a-smug-expectation-messy-reality-and.html">falls</a> or only slight rises in traffic volumes in London, much the biggest city. There are indications wherever one looks that steady falls in the price of fuel, vehicles’ improving fuel economy and a series of other cuts in the price of driving are pushing ever-greater numbers of motor vehicles onto the country’s roads.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yet I’m just as struck by the poverty of the debate about how to tackle this crisis as I am by the sheer unpleasantness of the conditions. Whereas the UK a decade ago was engaged in an earnest - albeit ultimately unproductive - debate about <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/2dd05e40-a0ea-11db-acff-0000779e2340">how to charge</a> for road use, there is currently <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/61cac552-de5e-11e6-9d7c-be108f1c1dce">no serious debate </a>about what to do. It has become expected at each budget or autumn statement that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will continue the freeze on fuel duty, even though it has contributed to an 18.9 per cent decline in average petrol prices over the last three years. I have heard little debate about the policy challenges presented by the exemption of a growing proportion of the UK’s car fleet from vehicle excise duty.<br /><br />It’s a fair commentary on the intellectual vacuity of the current discourse on the subject that one of the main problems Chris Grayling, transport secretary, identified as a challenge for the UK’s road system in an interview in December was “excessive” use of speed bumps. This is the rhetoric one should expect in the immature, early stages of a government, when ministers are caught up in the simplistic solutions they dreamed up while still in opposition. By their second terms, most governments have started to recognise unpleasant, underlying realities and begun to tackle them. It seems clear to me that the abundance of cheap leasing finance is contributing to the misery by making it ever cheaper for drivers to get hold of very large and very powerful cars, whose effect on other road users is particularly intimidating.<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1srdcdVy_uM/WLhYRnHch4I/AAAAAAAAC-E/8-OvpjGLc-IHBk7i8djCwVi20tRm7pnvgCEw/s1600/Birmingham%2Brush%2Bhour.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1srdcdVy_uM/WLhYRnHch4I/AAAAAAAAC-E/8-OvpjGLc-IHBk7i8djCwVi20tRm7pnvgCEw/s320/Birmingham%2Brush%2Bhour.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rush hour traffic in central Birmingham, one of the UK's<br />most car-dependent cities: a result of badly-positioned<br />speed bumps, presumably</td></tr></tbody></table><br />As long as the problems go unaddressed, however, roads in most of the UK will continue to clog up with cars, efforts to encourage cycling and public transport will grow steadily more fruitless and the actions needed to redress the balance will grow ever more extreme.<br /><br />At the heart of the debate is the question of what one thinks it means to let motoring get steadily cheaper. There is an argument that it’s perverse to argue on principle that any item - especially one that’s indispensable to many people’s daily lives - should be more expensive. I’ve certainly heard passionate arguments from some transport economists that it’s just that motorists should benefit from recent years’ undoubted rapid improvements in vehicles’ fuel economy. It’s also clear that in the UK - <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/20c50478-ca16-11e3-ac05-00144feabdc0">unlike the US</a> - taxes on motorists cover the direct costs of building and maintaining the road network many times over. That prompts many people to argue that any extra tax take from drivers represents an unjustified extra tax burden to which the government is right to object.<br /><br />But it’s impossible to miss the effects of allowing the steady fall in rates. While traffic levels in central London <a href="http://content.tfl.gov.uk/street-performance-report-quarter3-2016-2017.pdf">continued to fall</a> in the last quarter of last year, for example, overall traffic volumes on major roads rose by 1 per cent year-on-year. To judge by my experience of dodging speeding vehicles haring down back streets, the rise on minor roads in outer London must be far higher. Minor roads in rural areas are also becoming increasingly miserable to use outside a motor vehicle. Bus travel is <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/53f5f869-e38d-3740-bfd4-ce7562bb8e83">falling</a> in many parts of the UK as growing volumes of cars clog the roads, getting in buses’ way. Traffic growth on the railways - where ticket prices mostly go up by at least the inflation rate - has <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/99444630-ab13-11e6-9cb3-bb8207902122">slowed down sharply</a>. As long as fuel duty is frozen, transport policy will remain hostage to the growing advantages enjoyed by cars.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-left: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XeHFXuHDsr8/WLhWo3e6o-I/AAAAAAAAC94/I6CfjQomR84oEW3q3UYRWR8beI6e9jTBwCEw/s1600/IMG_0524.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XeHFXuHDsr8/WLhWo3e6o-I/AAAAAAAAC94/I6CfjQomR84oEW3q3UYRWR8beI6e9jTBwCEw/s320/IMG_0524.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Space allocation in Glasgow, which faces worsening<br />congestion. I'm sceptical bike paths are the main cause in<br />cities like this.</td></tr></tbody></table>It’s even more alarming that there’s so little recognition of what’s driving the increasing congestion in a lot of the UK. When he was asked about the issue in a recent interview with the Evening Standard, Chris Grayling immediately started talking about the <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/chris-grayling-i-use-a-phone-to-buy-lunch-so-why-do-we-still-queue-for-rail-tickets-a3413296.html">poor design </a>of some bike lanes in London, suggesting that the issue in most of the country was the shrinking capacity of the road network, not the growing volume of traffic. While there’s clear evidence that new bike facilities have <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/a-past-mayor-miserable-blogiversary-and.html">contributed</a> to the growing congestion problem in central London, it’s equally obvious that the paltry facilities provided for cycling in most of the country take up nothing like enough space to have seriously affected road capacity. Road use is responding to price signals precisely as conventional economics might predict it would.<br /><br />The action in central London has at least had some of the intended effect. Cycling levels in central London in the October to December quarter were up 5.4 per cent year-on-year, while motor traffic fell again, by 3.5 per cent.<br /><br />It is also, meanwhile, far from clear that placing a higher tax burden on drivers would be as unjust as opponents typically suggest. There is a wide range of estimates of whether the annual tax take from driving covers the full external costs of motoring - most of which come from congestion. Even the Institute of Fiscal Studies, a respected thinktank, failed to make a clear judgement on the question in a report last February that called the present fuel duty regime “a mess”. But there was a consensus among economists several years ago, before recent years’ freezes, that the tax take was probably falling just short of covering the full costs. The steady falls since in fuel prices, improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency and growing exemptions from vehicle excise duty must all have made the situation worse.<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-r0JEbnb0RLU/WLhaZeQBUGI/AAAAAAAAC-k/NXemytbgNcAPvEOuE_EVIrGbpXY7PWkTwCEw/s1600/IMG_0673.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-r0JEbnb0RLU/WLhaZeQBUGI/AAAAAAAAC-k/NXemytbgNcAPvEOuE_EVIrGbpXY7PWkTwCEw/s320/IMG_0673.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">London's policies have at least shifted the central London<br />balance towards cyclists - even if this driver failed<br />to understand it.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />I had particular cause to rue the changes ten days after my epiphany near Chester when my daughter announced that she and her friend planned that day, for the first time, to ride their bikes the 3.4 miles to school in Dulwich. While the outbound journey, which I rode with them against rush-hour traffic, was relatively calm, I found myself repeatedly buzzed even on quiet streets on the way back by high volumes of fast-moving vehicles. If current road conditions left even me, a hardened and committed cyclist, a little shaken and worried about my daughter’s safety, I realised, it was small wonder that she was so unusual in her choice of transport to school.<br /><br />Yet there’s no mystery about what could be done to tackle these issues. It has been well known for years that fuel duty was bound to do a <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/general-theory-of-cycling-motorists-and.html">steadily worse job</a> of controlling congestion as vehicles became more fuel-efficient and started to rely on untaxed power sources such as electricity. Both Conservative and Labour governments have recognised in their later terms in office that a system that charges drivers according to where they drive and the time of day is the only realistic answer to the challenges of charging for road use. In a rational world, the UK’s national transport policy debate wouldn’t revolve around speed bumps and the impact of desultory cycle facilities but around the details of the road-charging system that was inevitably on its way. Policy could move on to managing traffic, rather than falling victim to the inevitable effects of surrendering to it.<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D8aUJmyVePs/WLhZRtQswbI/AAAAAAAAC-U/qIAn6S48TK050qDr7EYZW14l9BwFiZ3mgCEw/s1600/Heathrow%2Bpod.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D8aUJmyVePs/WLhZRtQswbI/AAAAAAAAC-U/qIAn6S48TK050qDr7EYZW14l9BwFiZ3mgCEw/s320/Heathrow%2Bpod.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An electric, autonomous pod vehicle at Heathrow Airport:<br />current policies take no account of how roads will be funded<br />when more vehicles start to resemble this one</td></tr></tbody></table><br />But there is, I think, a powerful reason why rational policy considerations are having an even harder time than normal asserting themselves. During the late years of the 1979 to 1997 Conservative government, there had been more than a decade of steady policy development that had made it clear the simple answers were not going to work. Much the same goes for the later years of the 1997 to 2010 Labour government. In contemporary British politics, by contrast, every policy calculation is subservient to the effort to mitigate the <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/a-ride-on-autopilot-famous-cricket.html">unnecessary damage</a> of pulling out of the European Union. I sense the distraction of dealing with the distraction of an incompetent, unpredictable president is having a similar effect in the United States.<br /><br />The effects of that policy stasis are visible in far more places than beside the A548. Long years of declines in road deaths have halted or started to reverse. Pollution is growing worse. The pleasure of a quiet bike ride along a winding country lane is increasingly interrupted by the speeding of vehicles taking the route their navigation app tells them will be least congested. It is hard in many parts of the UK to avoid the feeling that the country is being slowly strangled by this surrender to the motor car. I’m unlikely in the immediate future to have much respite from worrying about the riding conditions for my daughter or the many others suffering the effects of current miserable, directionless policies.</div></div></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2017/03/a-cheshire-epiphany-cheap-driving-and.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-5838495446217022643Sun, 22 Jan 2017 20:25:00 +00002017-03-14T06:41:45.872-04:00Andrew GilliganBoris JohnsonCaroline PidgeonCavalierscongestionLondonLondon Assemblypublic policyroad pricingroundheadstrade-offstransport policyA past mayor, a miserable blogiversary - and why I still think Roundheads must come to the rescue<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">It used to be frustrating asking&nbsp;<a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/how-should-cyclists-pedal-electoral.html" style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Boris Johnson</a>, London’s mayor until May last year, about transport policy issues. During my first stint as a transport correspondent, from 2003 until 2011, I recall asking him about his determination to remove the western extension of London’s congestion charging zone, to introduce new cycling facilities as mere blue-painted lanes down busy main roads and replace London’s efficient, articulated buses with a lower-capacity, double-deck vehicle loosely based on a much older vehicle. All the concerns were shrugged off, with Johnson’s trademark insouciance.<br /><br />All those ideas are now recognised, to a greater or lesser degree, as bad ones that either should have been better thought through or not implemented at all. Congestion in west London <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/9ddf796a-8df2-11e0-a0c4-00144feab49a">rose</a>; the painted “superhighways” proved tragically dangerous and the new bus has become an expensive joke that has helped to damage the performance of London’s bus networks. The mayor, meanwhile, went on to be a leading figurehead of the movement calling for the UK to make one of its biggest, most poorly thought-out policy decisions since the second world war when it voted to leave the European Union.<br /><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OMvbRwW5-Ow/WIURnR0rTsI/AAAAAAAAC4g/I8kBYg-Ks-Y7u6HcXvPekbez0ijsF1t7gCLcB/s1600/IMG_0605.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OMvbRwW5-Ow/WIURnR0rTsI/AAAAAAAAC4g/I8kBYg-Ks-Y7u6HcXvPekbez0ijsF1t7gCLcB/s320/IMG_0605.jpeg" width="240" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Routemaster at the London Transport<br />Museum: nostalgia for the design classic<br />inspired Boris Johnson to commission<br />the New Bus for London, the opposite of<br />a design classic</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;"><br />This past week, however, has left me with the impression that far more people approve of the former mayor’s style of policy-making than I had suspected. Since I posted on Monday a&nbsp;<a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/a-smug-expectation-messy-reality-and.html" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">blogpost</a>&nbsp;calling for cyclists to face the reality that London’s roads are growing steadily more congested, I’ve faced a series of criticisms. Many of them have focused on my argument that cyclists have to recognise that our aspirations to get further dedicated space for cycling facilities mean we are in competition for scarce road space with other road users, who face growing congestion. Cyclists ought, I argued, to take an interest in the problem and in measures to rein it in.<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.6667px;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></span>In particular, I was the subject of a&nbsp;<a href="https://andrewgilliganblog.wordpress.com/2017/01/18/superhighways-congestion-and-selective-statistics/" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">blogpost</a>&nbsp;by Andrew Gilligan, who worked as Boris Johnson’s cycling commissioner. He accused me, essentially, of cherry-picking evidence to suit my position and asserted, based on Transport for London’s Journey Time Reliability figures, that congestion wasn’t really getting worse at all.<br /><br />The various criticisms I’ve faced have fallen into a series of broad groups. Several people argued that there was no real trade-off between cycling and other modes. Others contended that other road-based modes were so much less worthwhile that any trade-off was worth it even if it, say, caused serious inconvenience to people making the 6.5m daily trips by bus in London. Finally, there was a strain of thought that I was mistaken in even my attempt to put cycling in a broader policy context. Cyclists should make the argument for cycling provision and forget about anything else. I’d class all of these criticisms as falling, like Johnson himself, within the&nbsp;<a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/barging-in-tribeca-top-gear-boor-and.html" style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cavalier tradition</a>&nbsp;in British public life - that the depth of one’s convictions and the elan with which one states them are more important than the pettifogging details of the statistics.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Er2TsnX-mVc/WIUUSUJOYdI/AAAAAAAAC4w/--GeppkPBCkElbWWjL0EMCV2ebNTcci_ACLcB/s1600/IMG_0521.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Er2TsnX-mVc/WIUUSUJOYdI/AAAAAAAAC4w/--GeppkPBCkElbWWjL0EMCV2ebNTcci_ACLcB/s320/IMG_0521.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A mid-morning traffic queue on Blackfriars Road: road-pricing<br />might fix this.<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>However, a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/london_stalling_-_reducing_traffic_congestion_in_london.pdf" style="white-space: pre-wrap;">report</a>&nbsp;on Thursday from the London Assembly’s transport committee has reinforced my conviction that my cautious approach to public policy - which I’d class as being in the Roundhead tradition - is in the ascendant, in London at least. The report acknowledged the growing congestion crisis and that the recent worsening in conditions reflected a shrinking of the road network’s capacity for multiple reasons. It advocated - as I do - pressing ahead with new, high-quality cycle provision such as the segregated cycle superhighways. However, it also said it was vital to introduce road-pricing - as opposed to a simple congestion charge for entering central London - to relieve the pressure on the roads. I very much hope - although I doubt that the current mayor has the political courage for it - that the assembly members’ recommendation will be followed. I also hope that the debate over the issues can become more constructive than it feels to me after a week that’s marked a fairly miserable <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/invisible-visible-man.html">fifth anniversary</a> for this blog.</div><br />The focus of much of the criticism, however, has been my reference in the last blogpost to a point that ought, in a rational world, to be uncontroversial. This was to point out that central London’s congestion is worsening and that it is likely that the building of wide cycle tracks along some of central London’s key arterial roads - and the addition of some cyclist-only phases at junctions - contributed to this. I made the point not because I disapprove of the cycle tracks’ building - I <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/a-prosecutors-phone-call-remembrance-of.html">enthusiastically endorse them</a> - but because of the implications for the future.<br /><br />Anyone who wants an extension of the existing tracks needs to gain the approval of planning authorities and a mayor’s office already facing substantial pressure because of the road network’s deteriorating performance. There seems to me to be little likelihood that a mere restatement of the now-conventional wisdom that the cycle superhighways are unrelated to traffic delays is going to win over many of the people that need to be persuaded.<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-left: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OkcckTaA9CE/WIUSxFGDPXI/AAAAAAAAC4o/FBKgmtjq3FsJbzzLVREf649-bjVJgOsYACLcB/s1600/IMG_0599.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OkcckTaA9CE/WIUSxFGDPXI/AAAAAAAAC4o/FBKgmtjq3FsJbzzLVREf649-bjVJgOsYACLcB/s320/IMG_0599.jpeg" width="240" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cyclists last week on the north-south<br />Cycle Superhighway: a stirring and encouraging<br />sight - but still, I contend, one that must be<br />affecting the neighbouring motor traffic.<br /><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">As I pointed out in the original post, the average speed of traffic in central London has fallen in the most recently-published figures despite a substantial fall in the volume of traffic on the roads, a phenomenon that most observers attribute to a shrinking of the network’s capacity. While it’s true that the network’s capacity started to fall well before the cycle superhighways were built, there’s little serious doubt that the superhighways are contributing to delays for motor vehicles. An <a href="http://content.tfl.gov.uk/pic-161130-07-cycle-quietways.pdf">update in November</a> on implementation of the schemes said that journey times for motor vehicles southbound alongside the north-south cycle superhighway had returned to pre-construction levels since completion of the project. All other traffic flows alongside the superhighways were longer, however.<br /><br />The added delays included eastbound journey times alongside the east-west cycle superhighway that were 10 to 15 minutes longer in the evening peak than before the facility was put in. The roads concerned will undoubtedly have been affected by the wider worsening of congestion in the period in question and the changes will no doubt, like all changes to road networks, bed down as drivers adapt their behaviour to cope. But it seems profoundly improbable that the big changes to traffic flows have not contributed to this slowing and it is impossible that this substantial slowing of some journeys has not played a part in the declining average speeds reflected in the statistics.<br /><br />It was my reference to the superhighways’ effects that prompted Andrew Gilligan’s response. Referring to me by my title in my day job - something I’ve tried to keep scrupulously separate from my free-time blog - he accused me of using figures that were “selective” and that the true indicator of congestion was quite different. At least one person treated this post as definitive proof that I was wrong. “Watch<a href="https://twitter.com/mragilligan"> @mragilligan</a> use knowledge and stats to destroy<a href="https://twitter.com/RKWinvisibleman"> @RKWinvisibleman</a> 's recent argument that cycle lanes are causing London congestion,” wrote @BrixtonHatter on Twitter, linking to Gilligan’s post.<br /><br />Yet Gilligan’s arguments seem at odds with nearly everyone's experience. His argument that congestion isn’t getting much worse pre-supposes that the ever-slowing movement of London buses and logistics companies’ dwindling productivity are mere fever dreams. Any anecdotal evidence - the fact, for example, that I often now have to&nbsp;<a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/a-daily-obstacle-course-problem-denied.html" style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">pick my way</a>&nbsp;between halted vehicles to buy my lunchtime sandwich, whereas the danger used to be moving ones - is also to be disregarded.</div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br />In fact, the reason why I didn’t quote Gilligan’s favoured measure of congestion - journey time reliability - is that the average speed figure that I used more accurately captures the nature of this problem. The reliability figure tracks the proportion of vehicles that complete trips in more than five minutes longer than the average time over the previous year. It consequently measures the frequency of severe, one-off disruption. Its use of previous average speeds means it is designed to screen out the kind of gradual, strangling congestion that is steadily choking London.<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-w0P9-wUaq98/WIUUmzNSB4I/AAAAAAAAC48/2b0Cqdig07kH5G-SBsGecR9eK0DmFZz3ACLcB/s1600/IMG_0138.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" height="234" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-w0P9-wUaq98/WIUUmzNSB4I/AAAAAAAAC48/2b0Cqdig07kH5G-SBsGecR9eK0DmFZz3ACLcB/s320/IMG_0138.jpeg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A typical weekday lunchtime on Southwark Bridge:<br />anecdotal evidence that it seems I must disregard.</td></tr></tbody></table>My central point remains. It must, in my view, be a serious problem if average daytime traffic speeds in the centre of London - a place where motor vehicles are needed to serve a big upsurge in building and infrastructure work, to carry people in buses and to make deliveries - have dropped as low as 7.8 mph.<br /><br />Members of the London Assembly’s transport committee seem to share many of my concerns. In the foreword to their London Stalling report on congestion in the capital, Caroline Pidgeon, the committee’s chairwoman, wrote that congestion had begun to rise sharply.<br /><br />“Traffic has slowed down and road users are spending longer stuck in delays,” she wrote. “Buses have become so unreliable that usage has begun to fall, after many years of growth.”<br /><br />The report went on to list a very Roundhead set of recommendations - ideas based on careful attention to the statistics, rather than the kind of sweeping, grand gesture that used to be the rule under the previous mayor. While I am delighted that the existing superhighways have been built and grateful to Andrew Gilligan for his central role in that achievement, it seems vanishingly unlikely that either Sadiq Khan or the assembly’s transport committee will sign off on a significant extension if it will produce a further worsening of congestion. <br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YsdDBy-AluI/WIUSRZgCw4I/AAAAAAAAC4k/fFH0Uk9TN2Iy03nGbyTtmQ-nwuFAt67EwCLcB/s1600/Alexander%2Bon%2BCSH.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YsdDBy-AluI/WIUSRZgCw4I/AAAAAAAAC4k/fFH0Uk9TN2Iy03nGbyTtmQ-nwuFAt67EwCLcB/s320/Alexander%2Bon%2BCSH.jpeg" width="240" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ultimate motivation: my son enjoys the east-<br />west cycle superhighway by the Embankment</td></tr></tbody></table><br />It is hard to imagine some of the arguments I’ve heard this week will succeed in swaying the current mayor. It is inherently implausible, for example, that the mayor will allow measures that significantly delay bus passengers to benefit cycling, which currently accounts for just 700,000 daily journeys across the capital. As with nearly every other public policy question, measures to favour cycling are subject to trade-offs with other choices in which policymakers have to balance competing interests in as equitable a way as possible.<br /><br />But the ultimate question for me doesn’t involve politics, policy arguments or the different personality types of the people involved. It’s that my children since we returned to London from New York in July have become much keener on cycling in central London, thanks to the cycle superhighways. I want to see them extended so that we need do far less jostling with aggressive drivers to reach them.<br /><br />The Cavaliers had the chutzpah to get the existing facilities built. Perhaps their current strategy - berating the uselessness of everyone concerned, questioning their motives and insisting that no trade-offs are necessary - will succeed again, despite my concerns. But my guess is that the next push will require more of a Roundhead’s recognition of the complexity of the policy challenges and readiness to get to grips with them. I hope that such sober thinking will grow far more widespread than it seems to be at present.</div></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2017/01/a-past-mayor-miserable-blogiversary-and.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-2820938053973372242Mon, 16 Jan 2017 19:57:00 +00002017-01-18T17:55:41.436-05:00Andrew Gilligancargo bikescongestioncycle superhighwayscyclingFlorence EshalomiLondon UndergroundMike Brownroad capacitySadiq KhanstrikesTransport for LondonUberA smug expectation, a messy reality - and why it's time to get to grips with a tough conundrum<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal">Before I got out on my bike, I was anticipating that Monday, January 9, was going to be my smuggest cycling day since returning to <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city> from <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state> in July. A <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/793c27dc-d63c-11e6-944b-e7eb37a6aa8e">strike</a> by station staff on the London Underground had brought the busiest bits of the capital’s most important public transport system to a halt. And, as I sat at home writing initial stories about what was happening, I noticed account after account of chaos on the roads as would-be underground users turned to cars and buses to get to work. I imagined myself slipping casually through the traffic on my bike, warmly congratulating myself on the excellence of my transport choices.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In the event, the day ended up feeling less like a triumph and more like a reminder of the acuteness of the transport policy challenges facing London. By the time I left home to ride to the office, around 10am, the bus lanes that I’d normally use for the early stages of my journey were choked with other forms of motor traffic. Progress was so slow I retreated to the side streets, which in places were little better.</div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Q0nUgzWsCmM/WH0fo6OhjNI/AAAAAAAAC2o/cn_I1XrCT3474HQPA469rw_dr8gewEiagCLcB/s1600/Traffic%2Bbacked%2Bup%2Bover%2BVauxhall%2BBridge.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Q0nUgzWsCmM/WH0fo6OhjNI/AAAAAAAAC2o/cn_I1XrCT3474HQPA469rw_dr8gewEiagCLcB/s320/Traffic%2Bbacked%2Bup%2Bover%2BVauxhall%2BBridge.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Traffic backed up on Vauxhall Bridge on January 9: a visible<br />demonstration of London's reliance on its underground.</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The incident dramatised an issue that’s been worrying me for some time. <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>’s roads become congested when people are emptied out of the underground and other non-road forms of transport onto the roads. Yet it’s an uncomfortable truth of campaigns to encourage cycling in inner <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>that the vast bulk of the growth in cycle commuting must be coming from a similar, slow-motion shift from rail-based modes onto already over-stretched streets. More and more complex demands are being heaped onto <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/an-oafish-limousine-driver-english.html">constrained roadspace</a>, without much sign of a strategic plan to manage the resulting pressures.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">On top of that, I noticed once I got to work how many twitter users were complaining of having hours spent on buses even on short journeys. Later in the week, would-be commuters on Southern, the mainline rail service, would undertake similarly unpleasant journeys during <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/ad1cf1e2-d67f-11e6-944b-e7eb37a6aa8e">strikes</a> by their service’s drivers. The stories illustrated the shortcomings of decades of efforts to encourage cycling. Cycle provision in most of <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city> still consists of signed routes down backstreets, most of which are growing ever busier and less attractive. It’s clear that most people will not consider riding on these, even in the most desperate circumstances.<br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Faced with placating demand for better cycle provision and the challenges of congested, polluted roads, Sadiq Khan, <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>’s mayor, seems anxious about building more of the direct, segregated cycle routes that might get such reluctant cyclists pedalling.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The challenge for everyone in London who wants more, safer cycling in central London is to devise arguments for better provision that recognise the new realities. It’s vital as the system accommodates growing cycling to safeguard road provision for the buses, delivery vehicles, emergency vehicles and other vital road-users that make up a high proportion of central <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>’s current road users. The challenge is similar for advocates in other big urban centres - including <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>, my old home - where people shift to cycle commuting mainly from modes that don’t depend on the roads.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YWRf4Db5tPc/WH0ge0mcEtI/AAAAAAAAC2w/KuM28iCiyMELrwJSHzVFDn4IWYMYAKgPQCLcB/s1600/Pedestrians%2Bby%2BSouthwark%2Bunderground.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YWRf4Db5tPc/WH0ge0mcEtI/AAAAAAAAC2w/KuM28iCiyMELrwJSHzVFDn4IWYMYAKgPQCLcB/s320/Pedestrians%2Bby%2BSouthwark%2Bunderground.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pedestrians spill out of Southwark underground station by the<br />north-south cycle superhighway. How many of them can switch<br />to cycling before the roads get even more congested?</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Yet some of the most influential figures on <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>’s transport scene continue to insist that the conundrum is so simple it barely exists. On January 5, Andrew Gilligan, <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>’s former cycling commissioner, tweeted a graph from Transport for <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>’s latest <a href="http://content.tfl.gov.uk/travel-in-london-report-9.pdf">“Travel in <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>”</a>&nbsp;report that attributed 75 per cent of <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>’s congestion to “excess traffic”. The conclusion was “blindingly obvious to all but motorists,” he wrote, dismissively.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">A little digging into the statistics for central <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city> fills in the details of the policy dilemma. Traffic volumes entering Central London fell 3.4 per cent between the June to September quarter in 2015 and the same quarter in 2016, part of a long-term decline that’s seen the volume of motor traffic entering central <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>decline by more than 20 per cent since 2000. Instead of increasing with declining traffic volumes, however, average traffic speeds in central <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city> - the easiest available proxy for congestion - fell 3.5 per cent, to 7.8mph. The network’s capacity is very clearly falling even faster than motor vehicle are going away. The amount of traffic that it takes for traffic to become “excess” is falling.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It is not clear, either, which part of the traffic can easily be reduced to alleviate the problem and free up space for cycling. The same Travel in <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city> report that Andrew Gilligan quoted says that private cars now account for only 18 per cent of motor traffic during weekdays in the central <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city> congestion charging zone. The other vehicles - private-hire cars, taxis, vans and heavy lorries - all have at least some arguable economic reason to be in the area. They are likely to be more resistant than private vehicle owners to stopping driving in the area.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bzC2EaTlsvE/WH0hffG62hI/AAAAAAAAC24/R9qt83JzvVcz_T22O1t5hWTnmoFTspkzACLcB/s1600/Southwark%2BBridge%2Btrucks.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="234" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bzC2EaTlsvE/WH0hffG62hI/AAAAAAAAC24/R9qt83JzvVcz_T22O1t5hWTnmoFTspkzACLcB/s320/Southwark%2BBridge%2Btrucks.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A typical traffic queue on Southwark Bridge: it's not clear<br />crackdowns on private cars or encouragement for cargo bikes<br />will solve this problem.</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">One of the most popular suggestions among cyclists for reducing the traffic is that more of the growing numbers of internet deliveries being made in central <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>could be shifted to cargo bikes. The idea is sufficiently attractive that I investigated the subject in my day job for a <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/77dcaafe-cdc9-11e6-864f-20dcb35cede2">piece</a> about the growing numbers of cargo bikes I see around central <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>. Yet I emerged from interviewing even courier companies that use cargo bikes a little depressed. While cargo bikes were helping them to make urgent deliveries despite the heavy traffic, courier companies told me, they would always be a niche vehicle compared with the vans that were their fleets’ mainstays.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Amid this growing crisis, meanwhile, the one unutterable suggestion among cycle campaigners is that the building of segregated cycle superhighways along a number of central <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>roads might be contributing to the problem. When Florence Eshalomi, a member of the London Assembly, asked cyclists on twitter on January 11 whether they agreed with a senior TfL manager that cycle lanes had had some impact on bus journeys, the replies mostly struck a similar note.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“Making <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>a byword for cycling is more important than bus usage,” one twitter user replied.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“I think any far measurement of bus delays would show that excess cars are the main cause,” wrote another. “There aren't that many cycle lanes.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The replies drew on the now-conventional wisdom among <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city> cyclists that the 12 miles of new cycle superhighways in central <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>- which I <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/a-prosecutors-phone-call-remembrance-of.html">love using</a>, especially when with my children - have had no significant effect on congestion. The facilities, however, have been put in on arterial roads that were already operating at or near full capacity. They have, crucially, introduced new, cyclist-only light phases that can only have introduced extra waiting time for motor vehicles both on the streets with the new facilities and those crossing them.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0VPy3jVSIQ0/WH0i9JhOxfI/AAAAAAAAC3M/0_i-14SxG2kLwOXqmEprjOenq3sAfyaGgCLcB/s1600/Blackfriars%2BRoad%2Btraffic%2Bjam.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0VPy3jVSIQ0/WH0i9JhOxfI/AAAAAAAAC3M/0_i-14SxG2kLwOXqmEprjOenq3sAfyaGgCLcB/s320/Blackfriars%2BRoad%2Btraffic%2Bjam.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A bus in a traffic jam by the cycle superhighway<br />on Blackfriars Road: the superhighway has no bearing<br />on what goes on on the rest of the road, it's said.</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">While there are plenty of other factors restricting <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>’s road capacity, it seems fanciful to imagine that cycle facilities alone can remove capacity from busy roads and have little effect on congestion. It is certainly clear the capacity of <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>’s roads fell around the time the new facilities were built. It is not unreasonable, it seems to me, for Sadiq Khan and Mike Brown, commissioner of Transport for <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>, to seek to reduce the effect of any new facilities on congestion before giving them the go-ahead.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Yet to say that the challenges facing <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>’s leaders are hard is very definitely not to say they are impossible. It is quite clear, for example, that action that reined in the growth of services such as Uber in central <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city> could have a significant effect. Private hire vehicles - the vehicles that provide the Uber service - now account for 12 per cent of traffic in central <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city> on weekdays. Any measure that makes deliveries to the scores of construction sites in central <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city> more efficient could free up significant amounts of road space. It is hard to understand why low-emission vehicles, which take up the same road space as others, remain entirely exempt from congestion charging.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It is regrettable, meanwhile, that <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>relies so heavily on the double-deck New Bus for <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city> given its poor capacity and the time it takes to load and unload. A wholesale reform and extension of the current central <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>congestion charge to make it more sophisticated and more closely related to the space each vehicle takes up on the road seems overdue. The mayor should continue to pursue increases in cycling because bikes provide clean, healthy, flexible transport. Extra cycling journeys can almost certainly be catered for more economically than extra journeys on the underground.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ec-iC7tVSjc/WH0jg4TZwJI/AAAAAAAAC3Q/9QhVc4aYGewlaOU7LUtZZ11JkV0kFPCRgCLcB/s1600/Pollution%2Bhaze%2Bover%2BLondon.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ec-iC7tVSjc/WH0jg4TZwJI/AAAAAAAAC3Q/9QhVc4aYGewlaOU7LUtZZ11JkV0kFPCRgCLcB/s320/Pollution%2Bhaze%2Bover%2BLondon.jpeg" width="238" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fog and pollution haze sits over south London:<br />more cycling might avert such incidents</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">It is far too easy, however, for the debate over this complex issue to slip into glibness. Taxi driver groups slip into this trap when they claim the simple removal of new cycle paths would restore <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>’s roads to flowing freely. Cycling groups fall into it when they pretend new cycle paths magically shift <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>commuters from wasteful cars onto space-efficient bikes.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The rest of my ride to work on January 9 was a stark reminder of the risks of ducking serious debate. I encountered drivers engaged in fierce rows over road space, a furious woman cyclist yelling at a man who had somehow wronged her and, in van after van, long lines of stressed-looking delivery drivers and workmen. An air of unhappiness and frustration hung over everything.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">While the scenes were far worse than those on a normal day, I made an inward vow to renew my efforts to think more seriously in future about the less acute but still worrying levels of congestion I encounter daily.</div><br /><div class="MsoNormal">If others do the same, it may prove easier to build wide support for the kind of excellent facility I found myself using towards the end of the trip. Wanting to take in the scene, I rode over <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Vauxhall</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Bridge</st1:placetype></st1:place> then down the east-west cycle superhighway along the Embankment. As van and taxi drivers sat motionless in the neighbouring traffic jam, I was finally slipping by the traffic jams, as I’d anticipated. Looking at the grim faces of the stationary drivers, it was a pleasure I was keenly aware I shouldn’t take for granted.</div></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2017/01/a-smug-expectation-messy-reality-and.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-1283414000969214274Sat, 31 Dec 2016 19:05:00 +00002017-01-02T03:48:03.134-05:00cycling activismcycling familiesGatesheadgenerationsKidical MassNewcastleNorthumberlandRough Stuff FellowshipTandem ClubA tandem ride in a field, a sad discovery - and why we all ride in past enthusiasts' slipstreams<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I can’t remember much about it except that it was the mid-1970s somewhere near Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland. But I remember that my relative - my father’s cousin’s husband, whom we called my uncle - asked if I’d like a ride on his tandem. For a minute or two, I lurched around a field on the stoker seat at the back, before being deposited back with my father. It was the kind of brief, new experience that children from fortunate backgrounds are lucky enough to enjoy many times while growing up.<br /><br />This experience had a far more profound effect on me than most other bits of childhood excitement, however. The ride was the first time I’d ever made a journey on two wheels, part of a process of learning about bicycles that has helped to shape both how I get about and, to some extent, who I am. My uncle and aunt were critical role models for me, much the keenest cyclists in the wider family and thoroughly steeped in the small-scale, self-contained British bicycling culture of their era. For a long time, I nurtured the intention of getting back in touch with them to tell them how much their example had meant to me. I wanted to share with them the many simple <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/a-ride-on-autopilot-famous-cricket.html">joys</a> that riding a bike had brought into my life.<span style="font-size: x-small;"></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; font-size: 14.6667px; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NWihymlacjg/WGf83BPCknI/AAAAAAAAC0o/MwlE0O7o2DA346Wd-4LxScuGkhktF35kgCLcB/s1600/Kidical%2BMass%2Bride.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NWihymlacjg/WGf83BPCknI/AAAAAAAAC0o/MwlE0O7o2DA346Wd-4LxScuGkhktF35kgCLcB/s320/Kidical%2BMass%2Bride.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bikes at London's pre-Christmas Kidical Mass ride -<br />a reminder that families continue to be critical to propagating<br />the habit of cycling</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Yet a chance twitter exchange on December 21 led me to do a Google search on their names and come up against a surprising, sad discovery. Without my hearing about it, both died within the past two years - my uncle in February 2015 and my aunt this past November. I won’t be able to share a last conversation about cycling. Nor will I be able, as I’d long planned, to get to their funerals by bike, as a quiet tribute to how they inspired me.<br /><br />The recognition of their having gone has, nevertheless, prompted me to reflect again on how the habit of cycling is propagated. In countries like the UK and the US, where cycling is a minority activity, many of us who ride bikes do so at least in part because some relative initiated us into cycling’s mysteries. My father taught me how to ride a bike and <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/why-family-for-me-is-bit-about-bike.html">how to handle myself</a> on the roads. But my uncle and aunt were examples of how a bike could be central to one’s daily transport and leisure time. They showed me that the self-reliance and communion with the world around that come with transport cycling could shape much of one’s life experience.<br /><br />News of their passing has also led me to reflect on how people such as my uncle and aunt kept cycling going in less cycling-friendly countries during the mode’s leanest years. It must have felt hard, sometimes, to maintain enthusiasm as roads were gradually redesigned to encourage private motor car use and to disadvantage cyclists. Yet sheer, naive enthusiasm kept them going.<br /><br />The ride in Northumberland stood out in part because it was a relative rarity. My aunt and uncle lived in Newcastle, a fair distance from where I grew up in Glasgow. We saw each other mainly on short visits during school holidays, spent largely with my aunt and uncle’s son, six months older than I.</div><span style="font-size: x-small;"></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BCQJ51IB1VA/WGf8l2fmP6I/AAAAAAAAC0k/IKpbErPy2y4jNFIO-woADlXIRLLdBM4lgCEw/s1600/IMG_0538.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BCQJ51IB1VA/WGf8l2fmP6I/AAAAAAAAC0k/IKpbErPy2y4jNFIO-woADlXIRLLdBM4lgCEw/s320/IMG_0538.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A tandem with special cranks for a child to pedal -<br />an image that would baffle my mother.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />But there was greater intimacy than the relationship might suggest. My father, an only child, grew up partly with my aunt, who with her brother stayed with my grandparents during their holidays from boarding school. Their own parents were abroad with their father’s work in the diplomatic service. There was a sibling-like fondness between my dad and my aunt and their family formed part of my family’s emotional furniture.<br /><br />I should admit that it was part of that emotional furniture that my mother, who never learned to ride a bike, found my aunt and uncle vaguely baffling. She used regularly to tell people, in amused disbelief, how they’d turned a whole room of their end-of-terrace house in Jesmond, Newcastle, into a space for storing and working on bikes. She was similarly horrified they’d wallpapered one wall of their front room with Ordnance Survey maps of areas 100 or so miles either side of Newcastle, to facilitate planning of touring trips. She scoffed over how my uncle had modified a tandem so that his son could help out with pedalling.<br /><br />I quietly thought their way of doing things rather cool, though. I recall their once visiting us in Glasgow with their touring bikes, watching them heading off down the road afterwards, turning smoothly onto the main road and aspiring to their calm poise and control on their laden machines. It is no accident that I’ve ridden a touring bike almost exclusively since 2007.<br /><br />But the point that influenced me most, I think, was not a specific technical point or some notion about how one got to work each day. It was that they enjoyed getting about by bike more than they cared what other people thought. This was, I think, the point that ultimately my mum both admired and found baffling - their indifference to convention. It’s because I feel something similar that I’m prepared to cycle to distant meetings without much concern about how I’ll look when I arrive.</div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-w_frzUpAu0Q/WGf9uwdL3PI/AAAAAAAAC0w/zDEDZFZVGOsVtcCAaowWCXlMmS8c7bIVwCLcB/s1600/Laden%2BLong%2BHaul%2BTrucker.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-w_frzUpAu0Q/WGf9uwdL3PI/AAAAAAAAC0w/zDEDZFZVGOsVtcCAaowWCXlMmS8c7bIVwCLcB/s320/Laden%2BLong%2BHaul%2BTrucker.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My Long Haul Trucker, loaded up: not the coolest type<br />of bicycle, but aspirational for me.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />While there are ways of looking cool on a bicycle - riding a minimalist fixie or cruising along on a retro-looking Dutch bike - both my aunt and uncle and I belong to a rather different, what-matters-is-what-works school of thinking. In contemporary, English-speaking societies, even as it’s become more socially acceptable to cycle, one still needs a bit of that spirit to make a bicycle one's main mode of transport.<br /><br />The defiance of convention wasn’t, I think, a principled stand. They seemed simply to feel such youthful enthusiasm for the experience of being on bicycles that it seemed silly to do anything else. My uncle was a member of the Rough Stuff Fellowship, an off-road cycling group that was a precursor of much of what would now be called mountain biking. They both participated in a group called the Tandem Club. After I discovered they’d died, I found an <a href="http://tandem-club.org.uk/members/tcj/tcj-200902.pdf">old club newsletter</a> to which my uncle had written, sending in a picture of his son on the tandem with him in 1973 in Jesmond. Sure enough, it has raised rear cranks to let him pedal. But there’s a lightness of spirit to the picture that’s a counterpoint to my mother’s bafflement. My uncle writes that he sent the picture because of his son’s smile, which he says is saying, “Ain’t tandeming grand?”<span style="font-size: x-small;"></span><br /><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bMpX4zTCHFs/WGf-IRZ_ASI/AAAAAAAAC00/cFu2LCVWO0M-yy0XG1nW1nlyumdbsT_NQCLcB/s1600/3937861492_99f3612a99_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bMpX4zTCHFs/WGf-IRZ_ASI/AAAAAAAAC00/cFu2LCVWO0M-yy0XG1nW1nlyumdbsT_NQCLcB/s320/3937861492_99f3612a99_z.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cyclists on the 2009 London SkyRide: a reminder that,<br />even as cycling grows cooler, a certain readiness to be<br />uncool remains vital.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Eventually, at some point in the 1980s, my aunt quit her job as an architect and they started their own bike shop in Low Fell, Gateshead, near Newcastle. They resisted, I recall, selling Raleigh Grifters, cheap imitation mountain bikes popular with kids, but had to give in. The shop was never, I sense, a huge financial success. The area near the shop houses a big - and not especially well-off - Orthodox Jewish community. My uncle would grumble about his struggle to persuade the community’s boys that maybe it was time for a new bike instead of repairing this one yet again. Fortune seldom seemed to smile on the enterprise. My aunt spent one Christmas cleaning up the flat above the shop after the tenant killed himself. Another Christmas was marred by a costly break-in.<br /><br />But there remained around them an unmistakable sense that a bicycle was a tool for exploring the world, in a far fuller sense than was possible in a car. The one time we took a foreign family holiday - to Normandy, in 1986 - we quite by chance came upon my aunt, participating in a Cyclists’ Touring Club tour of the area. She used to gripe around then - she was nearly 60 - about being classed a “veteran” when participating in competitive events. When I lived briefly in Newcastle during my newspaper training and I told them of our plans to honeymoon in the Czech Republic, they warmly recommended we visit Český Krumlov, which they’d visited on another touring holiday.</div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uWP4IZIzDMA/WGf-XjEr9qI/AAAAAAAAC04/fbhKNvixyr0lIHlTDHPj0RLxa92SsUAogCLcB/s1600/Touring%2Bbikes%2Bin%2Btrailer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uWP4IZIzDMA/WGf-XjEr9qI/AAAAAAAAC04/fbhKNvixyr0lIHlTDHPj0RLxa92SsUAogCLcB/s320/Touring%2Bbikes%2Bin%2Btrailer.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A worried cyclist watches as the driver loads his bike<br />at the end of his French touring holiday: I might not<br />have been there but for my relatives' example.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Without their example, I doubt I’d have spent much of one summer of my university holidays <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/a-loyalist-village-scottish-upbringing.html">cycling around central and southern Scotland</a>. I might not have felt bold enough to drag my own family on cycling-based holidays in western France and on Cape Cod. While they were far from worldly people, they had a clear sense of the boundless possibilities of the outdoors world and a continuous excitement about the the possibilities of using a bicycle to explore it. I had an enjoyable dinner with them while I was training in 1994 and recall my uncle’s explaining that the big risk with riding a tandem was the sheer speed they could gather on downhills.<br /><br />“If you don’t look out, before you know it you’re doing 50mph,” he told me.<br /><br />Such youthfulness is, of course, no substitute for eternal youth. When I last saw my uncle, in 2002 at my father’s funeral, he was suffering from emphysema, thanks to a life of pipe-smoking. My aunt eventually needed full-time residential care. But my mother passed on for far longer than one might expect stories of their soldiering on with their tandem, each in their 70s but making up for the other’s shortcomings. I got the sense that they were clinging tenaciously to the activity that had shaped their sense of themselves.</div><span style="font-size: x-small;"></span><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rFZQknTUseA/WGf_AS7S__I/AAAAAAAAC1E/gqeRtyU7lhAxWZInIDdm9WgrNO2oXk7cQCLcB/s1600/IMG_0534.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rFZQknTUseA/WGf_AS7S__I/AAAAAAAAC1E/gqeRtyU7lhAxWZInIDdm9WgrNO2oXk7cQCLcB/s320/IMG_0534.jpeg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bikes hang in my hall: not as convention-<br />defying as a whole room, but a reminder of my<br />relatives' influence.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />While many of my choices have been very different from theirs, I understand some of that instinct. I live, after all, in a house whose hall is hung with the family bikes. I’ve yearned for a child on a trailer bike to put in at least some pedalling effort. I’ve turned up mud-spattered for an important event because I insisted on making the journey by bike and the trip went less smoothly than I’d imagined. I’ve been determined to keep cycling to work even in weather in which others <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/a-frozen-water-bottle-crisis-of.html">thought I was mad to try</a>.<br /><br />It’s partly because of that fellow feeling that I wish I’d found out earlier about my aunt’s death and been able to attend the funeral. I would have liked to represent my father and to reflect some of that warmth among my father’s family towards my aunt. But I’d also have valued the opportunity to pay tribute to what they represented. They kept cycling even as planners drove urban motorways through Newcastle and peppered the city with mini-roundabouts intended to smooth the traffic flow. They continued riding bikes even as once-quiet rural roads became clogged with traffic. They made do with far less sophisticated machines than we now enjoy, braving mountain paths and high-speed roads alike with minimal gears, heavy bikes and rudimentary brakes.<br /><br />Such die-hard enthusiasts were the founders of many of the organisations that have been at the forefront of improving cycling across the industrialised world - the London Cycling Campaign, Transportation Alternatives in New York and many others. I see wizened, older cyclists at many activist events and respect the way they kept things going through far harder times. It is easy to get caught up in the present generation’s battles. It is easy to sneer at a previous generation’s focus on riding on roads and neglect of infrastructure. But the memory of my aunt and uncle has reminded me that we all still in a sense ride in their slipstream.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2016/12/a-tandem-ride-in-field-sad-discovery.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-2291206576931554447Sun, 04 Dec 2016 18:18:00 +00002016-12-04T13:18:34.243-05:00conflictcyclistsJoanna ReyesLondonLondon cyclingpedestriansroad dangerroad designA peeved pedestrian, a rider's broken shoulder and why it's time to stop designing for conflict<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s the kind of incident that a London cyclist experiences pretty regularly and that I’d normally put straight out of my mind. As I rode home from work a few weeks ago, down Lambeth Road past the Imperial War Museum, a pedestrian yelled at me as I rode through a zebra crossing: “You’re supposed to stop!” Since I’d ridden through as he was on the other side of a central pedestrian refuge from me, on a wide, four-lane road, I found the shout irritating, rather than guilt-inducing. He wanted to make a point, I sensed, rather than to express any plausible serious concern. At the closest point, we were at least four or five metres apart.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The incident has stayed with me because the Peeved Pedestrian of Lambeth Road seems to represent a significant current tendency in <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/why-some-people-get-angry-with-cyclists.html">anti-cycling thinking</a>. Again and again recently, people have responded to my writing about the dangers facing cyclists by complaining about cyclists’ behaviour in pedestrian areas. “A cyclist whizzed right past me on the pavement the other day,” the rejoinder to some tale of death-narrowly-escaped often runs. “What do you say about that?” People often use cyclists’ alleged misdeeds towards pedestrians as grounds to withhold their sympathy for people trying to improve conditions for cyclists to make riding safer.</span></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FPcubRdHrX4/WERY5CXWMgI/AAAAAAAACxE/ncp0t8-XJyAW43AJ0CIfZgQvoDd0oIW9QCLcB/s1600/IMG_0472.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FPcubRdHrX4/WERY5CXWMgI/AAAAAAAACxE/ncp0t8-XJyAW43AJ0CIfZgQvoDd0oIW9QCLcB/s320/IMG_0472.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Shared space" near Clapham Common,<br />South London: evidence, I think, of how<br />many cyclist-pedestrian conflicts arise.</td></tr></tbody></table><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This train of thought describes a world entirely at odds with the one I inhabit, where I feel vulnerable in encounters with pedestrians - far more than I conceivably would as a driver. It’s far from uncommon for people to rush into the road to try to knock cyclists off. I’m frequently forced when riding perfectly properly to swerve round pedestrians who see me but insist on not breaking their stride, apparently to express some irritation or anger. While I certainly bring more kinetic energy to most foreseeable collisions than a pedestrian would, the mismatch in power is very different from that between me and someone encased in a steel cage equipped with a powerful engine.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It makes far more sense, it seems to me, to see the undoubted friction between cyclists and pedestrians as a symptom of how poorly many streets have been designed to work for both groups. Cyclists and pedestrians are tussling like two hungry vultures over the scraps of <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/an-oafish-limousine-driver-english.html">public space</a> left over after the lion-kings of the space - the motor vehicles - have eaten their fill. The two groups would be far better off cooperating to seize some juicy prime cuts. The challenge is to recast people’s thinking to make that obvious.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I am not, I must make it clear, condoning or encouraging the types of behaviour that help to fuel the mistrust. I can understand that people find it irritating when a fast-moving cyclist <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/red-lights-stress-hormones-and-sympathy.html">swishes past at speed</a> in an area that’s meant to be devoted to pedestrians. I’m never impressed on the rare occasions that I see cyclists riding through red lights and causing genuine inconvenience to people trying to cross the road safely. I think all classes of London road user leave too little room for error around others, including cyclists around pedestrians.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5mvKYIkV-_M/WERZwiPY0qI/AAAAAAAACxM/Q88j_qBQTMgtyRIHPR2zx-b4dB7ongeTgCLcB/s1600/Cyclists%2Bdismount%2Bsign.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5mvKYIkV-_M/WERZwiPY0qI/AAAAAAAACxM/Q88j_qBQTMgtyRIHPR2zx-b4dB7ongeTgCLcB/s320/Cyclists%2Bdismount%2Bsign.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The City of London Corporation blocks a new bike path<br />over the theoretical risk it might pose to a pedestrian crossing:<br />astonishing given the tiny risk.</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But it’s important to put the risk in context. Only two of the 408 pedestrians killed on the UK’s roads last year died after collisions with cyclists. Only 89 of the 4,584 pedestrians seriously injured on the roads received their injuries in collisions with people riding bikes. While it would clearly be preferable for all these figures to be zero, cyclists account for 1.8 per cent of traffic on the UK’s urban roads and far more in the busy, inner-urban locations where most conflict between cyclists and pedestrians takes place. Since collisions with cyclists accounted for only 0.5 per cent of pedestrian fatalities and 1.9 per cent of serious injuries, it’s clear that being around people riding bicycles is markedly safer for people walking than being around people driving. Some 99.9 per cent of Great Britain’s 1,730 road deaths in 2015 were in incidents involving at least one motor vehicle.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I nevertheless regularly hear rationalisations arguing that these statistics obscure the nature of the risk, rather than illuminating it. People have told me that drivers are somehow more predictable than people on bikes - and that drivers at least don’t endanger pedestrians in their space - the pavement (or sidewalk, American readers). Yet around 6 per cent of pedestrian fatalities in London are people who were on a footway when struck. Overall, last year in the UK, there were more reported collisions on pavements between motor vehicles and people on foot than between cyclists and people walking.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OdExlut43EU/WERacLMMTDI/AAAAAAAACxQ/65ijZmgAphY9fIv32u3XmKnTU46ooq7DgCLcB/s1600/IMG_0117.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OdExlut43EU/WERacLMMTDI/AAAAAAAACxQ/65ijZmgAphY9fIv32u3XmKnTU46ooq7DgCLcB/s320/IMG_0117.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Drivers speed past the spot where Joanna Reyes died:<br />a reminder of the real source of danger.</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The illusion that drivers are safe and predictable only adds to the danger. The death last month of Joanna Reyes, an actress, on Commercial Road, East London, demonstrates the risks. Huge numbers of drivers drive at excessive speed down the stretch of Commercial Road, which I know well because we stayed there in July and August immediately after returning to London from New York. Reyes appears to have been hit while standing on a pedestrian refuge in the middle of the road, an area most people would assume themselves to be safe. A driver was arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving. Even as he shouted at me, the greatest danger facing the Peeved Pedestrian of Lambeth Road was that a motor vehicle would come speeding along the road and hit him.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Yet I suspect that pedestrians’ fears about people cycling aren’t much related to rationality. People who are habituated to regarding the only risk on the road as being large, noisy motorised machines are apt to be scared when they suddenly - and often too late - notice an approaching small, silent machine. The instinctive, angry reaction is so deep that I sometimes imagine it stems from some of humans’ oldest impulses. People seem instinctively to grow more alarmed at suddenly noticing something moving fast but silently in their peripheral vision than by something large, obvious and noisy that announced itself far further off.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s also far easier for a pedestrian to experience a run-in with a cyclist as an <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/a-wary-pedestrian-getting-metaphysical.html">interaction with another human being</a>. Drivers in cars are not necessarily visible and the vehicles can seem like a faceless force, a fact of street life. Because cyclists are very visibly people, it’s easier, I think, for people to feel rage at them.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ACVtZ616-iQ/WERa6zJU3-I/AAAAAAAACxg/bpH7g9RxK6Uu7fhbjlFHRhmZXdzq06tXgCLcB/s1600/IMG_0435.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ACVtZ616-iQ/WERa6zJU3-I/AAAAAAAACxg/bpH7g9RxK6Uu7fhbjlFHRhmZXdzq06tXgCLcB/s320/IMG_0435.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A shared-use path across Clapham Common: designed to<br />produce confrontation</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">On top of all that, a confrontation between a cyclist and a pedestrian is far more evenly-matched than many people’s complaints would allow. There was considerable controversy in September over a video that showed a cyclist on Millbank in Westminster passing uncomfortably close behind a pedestrian on a zebra crossing. While I thought that the cyclist left too little margin for error, the striking point for me was that the pedestrian deliberately reversed course to obstruct the cyclist’s path in retribution. Most people on foot know, I think, instinctively that they can do a fair amount of harm to a person riding a bike if they want, judging by the number of times I’ve had pedestrians deliberately block my path or try to knock me off my bike. If people truly lived in the mortal terror of people on bikes that some critics contend, such deliberate actions by pedestrians against cyclists would be as rare as attacks of that kind on people driving cars..</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Much of the road design I encounter, meanwhile, only serves to ratchet up the risks of such cyclist-pedestrian confrontations, rather than to dissipate it. The standard response of many local councils in the UK - and the US, where I lived for four years - is to regard cyclists’ demands as part of an amorphous “active travel” agenda and to force the two different groups into a redesigned but no larger space, which both sides are meant to share. The obvious dangers of such an approach are mitigated by erecting multiple signs telling cyclists to slow down. It is hardly surprising that many people on foot find themselves feeling irritated at being buzzed by fast-moving cyclists in such circumstances, while it’s entirely predictable that people on bikes - which people use to get fast to places they need to go - find themselves frustrated by designs that envisage their going at a walking pace.</span></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4jgyyC7L5-o/WERYc89BbcI/AAAAAAAACxA/EIkK0OmrIJ8B-dea-GomTvew5HBIkcKGQCLcB/s1600/IMG_0228.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4jgyyC7L5-o/WERYc89BbcI/AAAAAAAACxA/EIkK0OmrIJ8B-dea-GomTvew5HBIkcKGQCLcB/s320/IMG_0228.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Congratulations, you've built an interurban<br />bike path that's well-suited for high speeds.<br />What finishing touch does it require?</td></tr></tbody></table><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Even illegal on-pavement cycling - a regular bugbear of many pedestrians - reflects far more than many people appreciate the muddled design of many roads. I most often see fellow cycle commuters mounting the pavement near junctions when the lanes meant to be filtering them to the more visible, safe head of the traffic queue are blocked by motor vehicles. While I am sure that such behaviour infuriates people walking, I also know there’s a powerful impetus not to let oneself get stuck in a stream of motor vehicles - especially when the road designer has signalled it would be safer to be at the front.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The answer to many of the frustrations is for road planners to start recognising a point that should be self-evident: that motor vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians all have distinct and different needs and that far more clarity is needed to help all to share public spaces. It’s far less common for me to find texting pedestrians wandering heedlessly into my path when I’m using the clearly-demarcated north-south <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/a-prosecutors-phone-call-remembrance-of.html">cycle superhighway</a> on Blackfriars Road than when I’m riding on the short, confusing shared-use section of Sumner St, behind the Tate Modern. It’s also clear that cyclists using the new superhighways are far less prone to running red lights through pedestrian crossings than when on main roads and seeking to escape the road-wide charge of accelerating motor vehicles that a change of lights produces. In interfaces between people on bikes and those on foot, as in many other areas of life, it strikes me that strong fences have a tendency to create good neighbours.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-B8INRh0f118/WERbkxUYm3I/AAAAAAAACxo/KQArhK9tS7ofJ3r7omf2j4pI6y6bHVOEQCLcB/s1600/IMG_0403%2B%25281%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-B8INRh0f118/WERbkxUYm3I/AAAAAAAACxo/KQArhK9tS7ofJ3r7omf2j4pI6y6bHVOEQCLcB/s320/IMG_0403%2B%25281%2529.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cyclists wait patiently for the light on<br />the north-south Cycle Superhighway:<br />a striking sign of design's effect on behaviour.</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I recognise, nevertheless, that until such designs are widespread, I will find myself interacting with people on foot in spaces that are poorly designed for the purpose. I will seek, as I was doing even on the night of my run-in on Lambeth Road, to ride cautiously and respectfully around people on foot. I think it’s important that all road users try to avoid, where possible, causing other people on the road unnecessary stress.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I hope, however, that people on foot will return the favour a little too. While we both face the common enemy of the motor car, after all, I know that we both face some dangers if we collide and I’m knocked off my bike.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When pondering that point, I remember an incident from the summer of 2013 as I rode home down the Hudson River Greenway on the west side of Manhattan. Near a narrow section where runners and pedestrians were forced together, I came upon a middle-aged Dutch man slumped on the ground and grasping at his shoulder. He had hurt himself, I later discovered, after a runner had stepped off the walkway and into his path, knocking him off.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><span id="docs-internal-guid-256378d0-caf5-b9c1-56ac-121b1de8b034"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There could scarcely have been a starker illustration of the real, albeit small, risk that cyclists face in such situations. I waited for 20 minutes with the man until an ambulance arrived to take him for treatment for what seemed to be a badly-broken shoulder. A few miles after I restarted my ride home, I came upon the runner again. She had not only been able to continue her run uninjured but was apparently untroubled by the damage her actions had caused.</span></span></span></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2016/12/a-peeved-pedestrian-riders-broken.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-7343122503021333709Sun, 20 Nov 2016 20:26:00 +00002016-11-22T07:06:54.064-05:00angercyclingCycling in Londoncycling in New Yorkhatred of cyclistslycra-clad cyclistsMark Dennisonout-groupsTrigger HappyObstructive pedestrians, a crass video - and why your city's cyclists are the kind you don't like<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If I’d gone out looking for evidence of how differently people regard cyclists from how I regard myself, I could scarcely have done better than my experience this Saturday. In the afternoon, as I rode with my wife and my son along the Embankment in Central London, we encountered a crowd of pedestrians crossing the cycle track against the signal. “Watch out in the cycle track, please!” I shouted.</span></span><br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fw6cfGLxjRY/WDIDlqhkWvI/AAAAAAAACt4/ny-ZH04JXacTA5miT822kRFyCJKvtR7CACLcB/s1600/IMG_0192.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fw6cfGLxjRY/WDIDlqhkWvI/AAAAAAAACt4/ny-ZH04JXacTA5miT822kRFyCJKvtR7CACLcB/s320/IMG_0192.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The East-West Cycle Superhighway near Parliament Square:<br />site of the Invisible Visible Man's contretemps with<br />a group of pedestrians</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then, in the evening, I came across a trailer for Trigger Happy, a new series of Channel 4 comedy shorts. The first -&nbsp;<a href="http://www.channel4.com/programmes/new-trigger-happy/on-demand/62169-001">Angry Cyclist</a>&nbsp;- features helmet camera footage of the eponymous cyclist riding around streets. “Cycle lane!” he shouts at pedestrians, in imitation of precisely the tone I’d taken than afternoon. He then rides onto a section of pavement that is not, in fact, a cycle lane.</span><o:p></o:p></div></div><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The video was only the latest evidence I’ve seen in recent weeks of how cyclists continue to be regarded in the UK - and possibly even more in the US - as a strange, fringe out-group whose behaviour is baffling and infuriating to others. Earlier in the week, I’d felt a similar sinking feeling when I saw Tweets by Mark Dennison, a presenter on BBC Nottingham, a local radio station, encouraging people to call his show. “Cyclists… what do they do that winds you up?” he asked. He later defended the transparently tendentious tweet as merely a way of encouraging a “balanced” debate.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The comedy short and Mark Dennison’s tweet both came across as belittling a group of people who, at least when sharing the roads with motor vehicles, are vulnerable and relatively powerless. They showed the depth of the chasm of misunderstanding between cyclists and others. While my request to the pedestrians on the Embankment would have seemed self-righteous or priggish to the makers of Trigger Happy, it was in fact motivated by fear. I was worried that, unless they got out of the way, my nine-year-old would be marooned in the roadway when motor vehicles restarted.</span></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IkGRCdzZYUU/WDIFbqAn_bI/AAAAAAAACuQ/D_ZeHnRepC4sJi1pjC6uUmgRIQiSNLf4gCLcB/s1600/IMG_0238.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IkGRCdzZYUU/WDIFbqAn_bI/AAAAAAAACuQ/D_ZeHnRepC4sJi1pjC6uUmgRIQiSNLf4gCLcB/s320/IMG_0238.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Invisible Visible Boy on his bike<br />in central London: a reason for concern I hope<br />even the haters can understand</td></tr></tbody></table><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The incidents have led me to query why so many people continue to find me and other cyclists so bafflingly alienating. It strikes me as an especially important question given that many cyclists, like me, believe their countries’ transport systems would <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/a-sobering-email-writing-about-cycling.html">work better</a> if more people joined them by starting cycling. Current attitudes appear to be both a symptom and a cause of cycling’s remaining a niche activity, practised by a relatively small group of people.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I should say, first of all, that I understand at least a little bit of why Trigger Happy finds some cyclist behaviour funny. There is an underlying similarity to a lot of helmet camera video footage that cyclists post on YouTube. The cyclist is riding along a road - often at some speed - when a motorist does something stupid, dangerous and possibly malevolent. The driver’s behaviour is then held up for general condemnation in a tone that generally suggests the poster is standing, hands-on-hips shaking his head in shocked but unsurprised disbelief. I am sure that, while I don’t use a camera, my complaints about bad driver behaviour have a similar, rather priggish tone. I can see how someone might find it so predictable that it starts to seem a little ridiculous.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But the jokes become far less funny, it seems to me, the moment one starts to think about what shapes the culture that Trigger Happy and others hold up to ridicule. I’m surrounded by fast, aggressive cyclists on my morning commute down Clapham Road not because Londoners are by nature fast and aggressive when cycling but because the conditions have selected both who rides and how they do it. People who don’t feel capable of maintaining a steady 20mph are unlikely to feel comfortable riding down a wide, straight road in close proximity to drivers driving at 30mph and faster.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-U65FaAH6zoA/WDIBYfwWxMI/AAAAAAAACts/8NtKbR36e2cr1zcUktCrM0pV_qVJ3BQ0wCLcB/s1600/IMG_0394.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-U65FaAH6zoA/WDIBYfwWxMI/AAAAAAAACts/8NtKbR36e2cr1zcUktCrM0pV_qVJ3BQ0wCLcB/s320/IMG_0394.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cyclists at the Oval on my route to work:<br /><span style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: left;">some&nbsp;</span><span style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: left;">clichés about London cyclists persist<br />because they're partly true.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The cyclists I see around me have been as surely shaped by their environment as giraffes have been by conditions on the savanna or the American bison by the high plains. People wear bright clothing and helmets because they hope they’ll help to prevent or ameliorate collisions with fast-moving motor vehicles. It takes both the skills of racing cycling and a road-racer’s appetite for risk truly to embrace this style of commuting. That point came home to me forcibly on Friday when a fellow cyclist, to my astonishment, slipped through the gap - of barely a metre - that I’d allowed myself when overtaking a bus. One especially stressful recent morning, I witnessed a blazing row between two fellow cyclists over an apparent near-collision caused, as far as I could tell, by excessive risk-taking by one of them. The argument continued over a considerable distance, being resumed as both stopped at successive junctions.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This environment explains one of the most frequently remarked upon issues about the demographics of London cycling - that cyclists disproportionately tend to be better off, whiter and more male than the city as a whole. In a car-centric city where people feel skill, knowledge and equipment are necessary to cycle commuting, it's hardly surprising that cycle commuters often come from the class of people who have the leisure and finance to develop the requisite cycling skills <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/commuting-racing-and-french-col-climb_7376.html">recreationally</a>.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9_YyVWZhexw/WDIErJK-hfI/AAAAAAAACuM/NrnTFyUAs0cvmbMnII0G0QB-unGAK8njACLcB/s1600/IMG_0128.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9_YyVWZhexw/WDIErJK-hfI/AAAAAAAACuM/NrnTFyUAs0cvmbMnII0G0QB-unGAK8njACLcB/s320/IMG_0128.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A fairly typical bike path in London's<br />Docklands: experts can't work out why<br />cycling hasn't taken off here.</td></tr></tbody></table><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I’ve been struck recently by how even I, someone who’s cycled an average of nearly 4,000 miles a year for the last 13 years, feel a little <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/a-frightened-old-man-angry-taxi-driver.html">spooked by conditions</a> on much of my commute. I’ve had so many close passes from drivers after pulling out round stopped buses that I find myself increasingly stopping to let buses pull away. On Friday morning, a beautiful morning with nearly ideal conditions, I remembered well over half-way into my commute that I’d forgotten my security pass. I felt a frisson of fear as well as excitement when I realised I’d have to turn around and head home for it, even though I’d normally welcome the excuse to put in some extra miles.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There have, undoubtedly, been efforts to widen cycling’s appeal, both in London and New York, where I <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/a-tour-of-tolerant-diversity-horrors-of.html">lived for four years</a> until July. But Trigger Happy’s scoffing at cyclists’ tendency to shout at other road users about their rights highlights the big problem with many of them. Inadequate on-road cycle lanes, areas where cyclists and pedestrians share space and some quiet routes down parking-clogged back streets build in a significant level of <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/a-wary-pedestrian-getting-metaphysical.html">conflict between cyclists and others</a>. It might seem irritating to pedestrians to be asked please not to walk in a bike lane. But it is profoundly frustrating regularly to have to use spaces whose use is so unclear that other users obstruct cyclists unless specifically asked not to do so.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It should certainly surprise no-one that, in existing conditions, some cyclists are apt to break the road rules. If one knows, after all, that the traffic lights on a certain road are timed to suit drivers, not cyclists, and that a phalanx of drivers will chase after one the moment the lights change, the temptation to ride off through a red light and get away in peace can be very strong.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-542eTOOIakI/WDIC5tnbYnI/AAAAAAAACt0/jO_LRcXVHSQh2nlhIJxaoyMCph5QZelrwCLcB/s1600/IMG_0371%2B%25281%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-542eTOOIakI/WDIC5tnbYnI/AAAAAAAACt0/jO_LRcXVHSQh2nlhIJxaoyMCph5QZelrwCLcB/s320/IMG_0371%2B%25281%2529.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Helmetless, relaxed tourists on the east-west cycle<br />superhighway: evidence of how conditions dictate who rides.</td></tr></tbody></table><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The way to shape this culture is not, it seems to me, to berate existing cyclists for being as they are but to create conditions that will encourage a different kind of cycling. I certainly feel very different during the brief period each day when I cycle on the protected north-south cycle superhighway from when I’m in a 20mph pack racing down a bus lane. Even small changes can have a big effect. While I still jostle drivers for most of my commute, there are now segregated bike lanes through Stockwell Cross and past Kennington Park, previously the riskiest parts of the route I take. It’s no coincidence, I think, that, since those improvements, I see the occasional couple cycling to work and holding hands at traffic lights. While lycra-clad men still predominate, I find my heart lifting over such normal, human moments.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Better conditions are even, I think, starting to generate different types of cyclists. For four weeks in July and August, when we first returned from New York, I rode each day from our temporary apartment down the Cable Street protected bike path in the East End and onto the east-west cycle superhighway. I couldn’t help noticing that, in a deprived area with such good facilities, I’d see some families of eastern European immigrants out getting about by bike. On Prudential Ride London weekend, when many streets in the capital were closed to motor vehicles, I vividly recall the sight that most raised my hopes for the future. Near Blackfriars Bridge, a Bangladeshi woman in Salwar Kameez clothes paused on her hire bike as she waited for her son to make his way up the hill from the Blackfriars underpass.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QkQlVlCKS6s/WDH-18FgUWI/AAAAAAAACtc/58Ku2TbFrE4zaELQ7WYWbXxHoEYsuWOpACLcB/s1600/IMG_0385.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QkQlVlCKS6s/WDH-18FgUWI/AAAAAAAACtc/58Ku2TbFrE4zaELQ7WYWbXxHoEYsuWOpACLcB/s320/IMG_0385.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The East-West Cycle Superhighway in<br />Parliament Square: politicians will be slow<br />to build more such facilities while<br />cyclists remain alien</td></tr></tbody></table><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Yet the challenge remains that, for the moment, many existing cyclists fit into the kind of stereotypical pattern that can prompt others to label us as “them”. That makes politicians reluctant to provide the kinds of facilities that would produce more obviously non-alien cyclists. It is certainly not surprising that London’s new, left-wing mayor is back-pedalling on his predecessor’s plans to encourage cycling. It is easy to understand his concern that his natural constituency of poorer voters will find themselves stuck on the bus while middle-class cyclists such as I zip by on new facilities and vote for his rivals.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Until that impasse is broken, however, London and other big cities will find that most of its cyclists are people prepared to face down sometimes naked aggression from motorists and even, sometimes, from frustrated pedestrians.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><span id="docs-internal-guid-37e027cc-8347-6cdb-2f16-058ad12f04f5"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The challenge was made brutally clear to me as I completed my lengthy commute on Friday. As I neared Elephant &amp; Castle, a van driver deliberately pulled into my path. Then, apparently eager to ensure he cleared the junction before the traffic light changed, he tried, despite my clear signals to him, to turn across my path and force me to stop. It was hard not to be reminded of the most succinct answer to Mark Dennison’s question about what cyclists did that wound people up. “Breathe” was one of the very first responses.</span></span></span></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2016/11/obstructive-pedestrians-crass-video-and.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-8373535977313040857Mon, 07 Nov 2016 17:20:00 +00002017-02-03T11:43:13.843-05:00Canary Wharf groupsCitibikecycle superhighwayscycling controversiescycling policyinfrastructureLondon congestionLondon cyclingreporting paradigmssabotageA rainy weather puncture, a wave of negativity - and how the haters aren't sweating cycling's details<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As conditions for a cycle commute go, the steady rain this past Friday - which supplanted the <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/a-cliched-advert-cycling-in-mist-and.html">recent foggy weather</a> - was unattractive even before I started hearing a strange clicking sound from my bike’s front wheel. An inspection revealed the sound was coming from a drawing pin - or tack - stuck in the tyre. I was, briefly, hopeful that the robust puncture proofing of my Schwalbe Marathon Plus tyres might have protected my inner tube. When I pulled the tack free, however, I heard a steady hissing that told me I was going to be undertaking a roadside repair.</span></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ABJ41L35wdA/WCA8DSdl1PI/AAAAAAAACqk/8sp4hGWzsUYFvjYm6dDCT4Uzf6UIqC5ywCLcB/s1600/IMG_0404.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ABJ41L35wdA/WCA8DSdl1PI/AAAAAAAACqk/8sp4hGWzsUYFvjYm6dDCT4Uzf6UIqC5ywCLcB/s320/IMG_0404.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A chance tack in a cycle lane or a symbol<br />of the anti-cycling backlash? The mystery<br />remains unsolved</td></tr></tbody></table><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then, after I’d discarded the tack, I started to ponder the antipathy towards cycling and cyclists that I’ve spent considerable time recently discussing in person and via social media. The UK is in the midst of one of its periodic anti-cycling backlashes and I suddenly wondered if the tack had ended up in the new cycle path by Kennington Park by happenstance or malice. I scoured the wet pavement for the tack, photographed it then posted a query on twitter to ask if anyone else had suffered similar problems in the same area.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The act of posting the picture turned my mind back to thoughts about the roots of the recent rage in some newspapers and by some politicians against the growth of cycling. After I recently wrote about the <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/a-british-stand-off-unbridged-divide.html">gulf in understanding</a> between cyclists and cycling sceptics, I was bombarded with complaints that I was ignoring some vast conspiracy by the media and politicians to do down cycling. Commenters accused me of varying levels of complacency or complicity in this plot.</span></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I've been assured that I was naive to believe there was no generalised campaign against cycling because it was naive to think automakers had changed tack since their 1920s campaign in the US to have jaywalking outlawed. I've been told that Volvo engineers' designing of a cycle helmet shows there's a plot - use of cycling helmets, after all, correlates with lower cycling levels. I have been repeatedly told that the recent spate of newspaper anti-cycling stories can't be coincidence and even seen it posited that a particular national newspaper reporter "must be in somebody's pay".</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The truth is less exciting but no less worrying, I’m convinced. Having spent most of the last 13 years writing at least partly about transport, I simply don’t think most <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/why-some-people-get-angry-with-cyclists.html">opponents of cycling</a> - either in the UK or the US, where I lived for four years - care enough about the mode to mount such a conspiracy. It seems to me that, instead, many of the media attacks draw on unspoken <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/a-1980-crash-rushed-hearing-and-why.html">paradigms</a> about the nature of government. The sprouting of cycle lanes is taken to be an example of the work of politically correct (or possibly “bungling”) bureaucrats, who wrongly think they know better than the average, car-driving newspaper reader what the transport system needs. Cyclists are regarded as some sort of strange out-group like vegans or hardline environmentalists seeking to destroy the lifestyles that ordinary, common-sense people regard as entirely unproblematic.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The best way to combat this narrative, it seems to me, is to seek to change the terms of the debate. I believe there’s a sound, common-sense case for promoting cycling that, in the UK at least, is getting drowned out by complaints about the alleged anti-cycling conspiracy and bitter rows on twitter. It’s all the more urgent to get progress re-started because present conditions continue to prove deadly. </span><span style="color: #232327; font-size: 15.3333px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lucia Ciccioli, a 32-year-old Italian woman, was killed on October 24 cycling to work in Lavender Hill, not far from my house in Brixton. A week later, another Italian, Filippo Corsini, 21, was crushed by a lorry in Knightsbridge. I hope that a new venture, <a href="https://humanstreets.com/">Humanstreets</a>, modelled on the admirable, New York-based <a href="http://www.streetsblog.org/">Streetsblog</a>, will play an important role in making that case.</span></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--rtBQYZWI3U/WCBBeeMK6cI/AAAAAAAACq8/fzAhg4bhdH4hQvboBYmOFS8vDnOwqjBaACLcB/s1600/IMG_0403.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--rtBQYZWI3U/WCBBeeMK6cI/AAAAAAAACq8/fzAhg4bhdH4hQvboBYmOFS8vDnOwqjBaACLcB/s320/IMG_0403.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">London's North-South Cycle Superhighway,<br />at Southwark St: yes, the Daily Mail's<br />written angry stories about this facility's<br />existence; no, I don't think they're angry<br />for the reasons many others suppose</td></tr></tbody></table><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #232327; font-size: 15.3333px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">But, as I stood by the side of Kennington Park Road wrestling with my hard-to-remove tyres, I wasn’t feeling optimistic.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #232327; font-size: 15.3333px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">I started to think about the nature of anti-cycling anger after seeing a post on Twitter querying why the Daily Mail - which recently ran several pieces claiming that new cycling lanes were “paralysing Britain” - had run a piece touting cycling’s health benefits. The tweet’s tone was to query the Mail’s consistency. But, to anyone who’s worked in a newspaper, the idea that different sections of a paper would need to agree on such a matter is, frankly, ludicrous. British newspaper reporters are, in my experience, mostly uninterested in the content of the policy issues that they cover and far more interested in framing it into what they regard as a compelling narrative. The Daily Mail has a powerful bias in favour of thinking civil servants and council officials are engaged in some plot to impose bad ideas on ordinary Britons. The recent attacks follow that narrative, it seems to me, rather than being based on any strong idea about cycling.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #232327; font-size: 15.3333px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">The Daily Mail’s sinister genius is its ability to seize on almost any policy development as evidence that the world does indeed work the odd way its news editors believe it does. Like many people with an interest in road safety, I’m sure, I felt my heart lift this week when I saw that the Mail had run a front page story on distracted driving - only to feel it sink again when I saw that it was defining the problem as being one of foreign drivers. The story was a reminder of how different worldviews compete within many media organisations to shape how issues are reported. The story about cycling’s health benefits reflected the paper’s conviction that its readers want to find out ways to better their health. For that section, that narrative trumped the notion that cycling promotion was the work of nanny-ish bureaucrats.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #232327; font-size: 15.3333px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">The Mail’s tendency to report the world according to a set of preconceived notions is unusually pronounced but it has its less sinister counterparts in other places. The Guardian, for example, tends to report public-sector activity favourably and to report on business’ behaviour unfavourably. Some financially-orientated publications are apt to identify strongly with private businesses’ perceived interests. Most politicians I’ve met have a similar tendency to believe in a few core principles and then, in George Orwell’s telling phrase, to buy the rest of their opinions in “matching pairs”.</span></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GQ1w5Hy8ohY/WCBCPR5DhzI/AAAAAAAACrA/datiRpZx4voLF1DFmn2CjKae_mrtbb2LQCLcB/s1600/IMG_0385.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GQ1w5Hy8ohY/WCBCPR5DhzI/AAAAAAAACrA/datiRpZx4voLF1DFmn2CjKae_mrtbb2LQCLcB/s320/IMG_0385.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The East-West Cycle Superhighway by<br />the Palace of Westminster: inhabited by<br />owners of opinions bought in matching pairs</td></tr></tbody></table><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #232327; font-size: 15.3333px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Some of the reporting, meanwhile, reflects the one circumstance when cycling policy does get people's attention - when it </span></span><a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/bikes-can-be-hard-to-overtake.html" style="font-size: 15.3333px; white-space: pre-wrap;">threaten</a>s&nbsp;<span style="color: #232327; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15.3333px; white-space: pre-wrap;">something important to them, such as the </span><a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/a-signpost-note-anarchy-in-fort-greene.html" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 15.3333px; white-space: pre-wrap;">free parking space</a><span style="color: #232327; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15.3333px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> they regard as a right</span><span style="color: #232327; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15.3333px; white-space: pre-wrap;">. This explains, for example, the regular rows in New York when the Citibike bike-share scheme arrives in a new neighbourhood. People have seen that Citibike is coming but take little interest until suddenly a parking space disappears. The same phenomenon explains the perennial popularity of bad and dangerous on-road cycling facilities. Many politicians are eager to enjoy the chic, green-tinged halo of introducing a bike-share scheme or theoretically encouraging cycling. Yet few are prepared to weather the political storm of introducing facilities, like London’s new </span><a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/a-prosecutors-phone-call-remembrance-of.html" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 15.3333px; white-space: pre-wrap;">segregated cycle superhighways</a><span style="color: #232327; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15.3333px; white-space: pre-wrap;">, that truly reallocate space away from motor vehicles and give it to cyclists. Unsatisfactory compromises - bike routes down hard-to-access old railway lines, for example - proliferate.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #232327; font-size: 15.3333px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">During my 25 years in the newspaper industry, I have been far more dismayed by other reporters’ cynicism, willingness to go along with news editors’ ill-informed instincts and incuriosity about policy detail than I have by any willingness to cave to outside lobbying. Much the same goes for politicians. When he first became mayor, for example, <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/how-should-cyclists-pedal-electoral.html">Boris Johnson</a> - now practically sainted among active travel lobbyists as father of the segregated superhighways - took a series of harmful steps to further what he saw as a pro-business, anti-bureaucrat agenda. He removed space-efficient articulated buses, replacing them with a far worse alternative, scrapped the successful western extension of the congestion charging zone and undertook other measures aimed at “smoothing traffic flow”. Among the traffic-smoothing measures were the admission of motorbikes to bus lanes and a tinkering with traffic-light timing that reduced the time for pedestrians to cross at many busy junctions. All of these measures have contributed to London’s continuing problem with congested, unsafe roads.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zBzr7cUOLrE/WCC0QHFa8BI/AAAAAAAACrk/2QnOUsOPL-wY_ZbWRxFqCloZapCJ7DIjgCLcB/s1600/5743970995_74ecc5ab5e_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zBzr7cUOLrE/WCC0QHFa8BI/AAAAAAAACrk/2QnOUsOPL-wY_ZbWRxFqCloZapCJ7DIjgCLcB/s320/5743970995_74ecc5ab5e_z.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The new bus for London: one of Boris<br />Johnson's early contributions to making<br />London's roads less efficient</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #232327; font-size: 15.3333px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">I see this intellectual laziness and policy cowardice as far bigger barriers to the advance of cycling than alleged campaigns - always described as “well-funded” - by sceptical cycling opponents. I recognise that the main incident that fuelled these fears - the circulation by Canary Wharf Group of a screed complaining about plans for cycle superhighways - occurred while I was in New York and away from London policy issues. I also know that London business lobby groups continue to agitate about congestion in London and to blame it disproportionately on the cycle superhighways, which are only one of a series of factors contributing to the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/1c8ae594-7fea-11e6-8e50-8ec15fb462f4">current worsening</a> of motor vehicle congestion in central London despite falls in traffic levels. The London Taxi Drivers’ Association continues to fight sensible cycling schemes such as the Tavistock Place cycle tracks in Bloomsbury.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #232327; font-size: 15.3333px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Yet it seems clear to me that the basic instincts of the media organisations concerned and reporters’ tendency to copy stories that they feel have touched a nerve with readers are more than sufficient to explain the current rash of stories. The cowardice of the worst kind of local politician in the face of what he or she perceives to be the public mood is more than adequate to explain the backtracking in many parts of the UK on cycling plans and the actual ripping out of an already-built facility in the Scottish town of Ayr.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ddSrAtJZEEU/WCC09ca09qI/AAAAAAAACro/KFYbmnrhZfUDIhIZ1XiQ8vWZpy2PhcK5QCLcB/s1600/IMG_0138.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="234" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ddSrAtJZEEU/WCC09ca09qI/AAAAAAAACro/KFYbmnrhZfUDIhIZ1XiQ8vWZpy2PhcK5QCLcB/s320/IMG_0138.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Congestion on Southwark Bridge: campaigners need to<br />get better at combatting fears about such conditions<br />if progress is to resume</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="color: #232327; font-size: 15.3333px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">The good news is that fights against prejudice and cowardice are winnable. It was once held as axiomatic on both sides of the Atlantic, for example, that the struggle against drink-driving was driven by politically-correct nannyism. The practice’s dangers are now universally accepted. There was shock last week when part of the Daily Mail’s criticism of a judge involved in the Article 50 Brexit case was that he was “openly gay”. Until the 1990s, it might have been regarded as a legitimate scoop to expose his sexual orientation.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #232327; font-size: 15.3333px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">The bad news is that such battles tend to be protracted, painful and to require considerable guile. Cycling advocates need, it seems to me, to do a far better job of addressing people’s fears about what allocation of space - and time at traffic signals - to cycling means. Will it hold up bus passengers? Can a lower-capacity road really handle all the deliveries businesses along the route expect? I’ve said before that campaigners’ arguments should be far less nit-picking and far more addressed towards a mainstream audience.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-M7ynOknytCI/WCC1uh--pgI/AAAAAAAACrs/IhsWVioy-oM20X-G_oSAkQjkccvdh0elACLcB/s1600/After%2Bthe%2Brepair.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-M7ynOknytCI/WCC1uh--pgI/AAAAAAAACrs/IhsWVioy-oM20X-G_oSAkQjkccvdh0elACLcB/s320/After%2Bthe%2Brepair.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">After the repair: my bike as I prepared to ride off, feeling<br />down at heart</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #232327; font-size: 15.3333px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">It’s not only because of Friday’s experience that I feel pessimistic about prospects, however. Battle lines on both the pro and anti-cycling side seem very clearly drawn. Few people are airing novel arguments.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #232327; font-size: 15.3333px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">The worst and most bitter people, meanwhile, are resorting to more direct measures. While I don’t know how the tack I picked up came to be on the cycle path, another twitter user told me he recalled hearing of a tack’s being left around the same place recently. Multiple cyclists riding on the Bearsway cycle path north of Glasgow on Sunday picked up tacks, suggesting a co-ordinated effort at sabotage. That follows a recent, similar incident in Regent’s Park, in London.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><span id="docs-internal-guid-027a72d7-3de5-429f-8971-287f71326881"><span style="color: #232327; font-size: 15.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Whether my incident was part of that pattern or not, I rode off after 20 minutes’ repair work damp and cold, with skinned knuckles, feeling decidedly downbeat. I will feel more optimistic only when the UK's debate about cycling policy breaks free of its current, unproductive impasse.</span></span></span></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-rainy-weather-puncture-wave-of.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-7627410946249691393Sun, 30 Oct 2016 20:19:00 +00002016-11-01T05:35:18.814-04:00ClaphamcyclingCycling in Londonfogfoggy LondonLondonLondon historyLondon villagesA clichéd advert, cycling in the mist - and what a foggy London reveals about the city's identity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When La Défense, Paris’ equivalent of London’s Canary Wharf, launched a campaign to woo financial services firms from London earlier this month, they used a slogan to make long-term London residents sigh. “Tired of the fog?” it asked. “Try the frogs!” It was an irritating illustration of how comprehensively people’s ideas of London continue to be shaped by Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle. Especially since the advent of clean air legislation, it’s really not a typical London experience to find a man in a deerstalker emerge into view from only a few feet away, by the light of a conveniently-placed gaslamp.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sAOvOKHg8Eo/WBZQCmkgvxI/AAAAAAAACoI/4lM5ag8P7r4aX6ONMFti4ZK8IVSU1DhrACLcB/s1600/Foggy%2BBig%2BBen.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sAOvOKHg8Eo/WBZQCmkgvxI/AAAAAAAACoI/4lM5ag8P7r4aX6ONMFti4ZK8IVSU1DhrACLcB/s320/Foggy%2BBig%2BBen.JPG" width="244" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Foggy London might be as much of a cliché as&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">parliament's clock tower. But, as this picture</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">taken in this week's misty weather shows,</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">both still exist.&nbsp;</span></div></td></tr></tbody></table><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Yet clichés survive when there’s a little bit of truth in them. The last few days in London have been a powerful reminder for me, after four years in New York’s very different climate, about the distinctiveness of London’s weather. Day after day has dawned with anything ranging from a slight mist to a definite fog. As I’ve cycled to work or to meetings, the air’s felt an odd mixture of warm from the enveloping blanket of mist and cold from the pervasive dampness. Each day has felt slightly different, in a way that’s obvious only to someone travelling about by bike. The experience has stood in sharp contrast to the switchback ride between hot high summer and chilly late fall that my friends still in New York seem to have been experiencing.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The relative mildness of London’s climate fits with a general atmosphere that’s more subdued than in some other metropolises. More intense, <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/a-stunning-view-midtown-ride-and-why.html">denser</a>, in-your-face New York bakes its residents - and especially cyclists - in <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/a-heatwave-and-urban-nature-it-lets.html">summer</a>, only to <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/a-frozen-water-bottle-crisis-of.html">freeze them</a> in winter. Even its fog is more intense. While the city’s less prone to the generalised, damp mist that’s settled over London the last few days, such dense, impenetrable fog sometimes settles over the East River that I sometimes rode to work over the Manhattan Bridge unable to see the water below.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MZdXFZhowmQ/WBZNiknn4uI/AAAAAAAACn8/rqevjenS9cEKDrivGxoW-A1Y9kl62o_EACLcB/s1600/IMG_2745.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MZdXFZhowmQ/WBZNiknn4uI/AAAAAAAACn8/rqevjenS9cEKDrivGxoW-A1Y9kl62o_EACLcB/s320/IMG_2745.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Even its fog is more intense: cyclists head into dense,<br />East River fog on the Manhattan Bridge bike lane.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My feelings about the weather have made me realise how puzzlingly rural much of London continues to feel. Generation after generation has sought to erect a very English calm facade for a metropolis of nearly 9m people. I’m always a little surprised here when I encounter the same dense crowds of people I’d expect to see at every corner in Manhattan. In Manhattan, by contrast, if workmen were digging a hole and I saw soil underneath, I always felt a little incredulous. The city felt like a mass made solely of concrete and steel that should properly be bolted straight into the bedrock.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The issue has serious implications. In dense New York, far more people live within what should, theoretically, be easy cycling distance of their places of work and education. London’s lower density makes many trips longer and the rationale for getting about by motor vehicle stronger.</span></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2yKllJ6Seb0/WBZRRlV-w6I/AAAAAAAACoY/Dsgzjd0_Pu4ReAO3oXFVj2-nhM2aiHtCACLcB/s1600/6696507745_c661b2bc75.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2yKllJ6Seb0/WBZRRlV-w6I/AAAAAAAACoY/Dsgzjd0_Pu4ReAO3oXFVj2-nhM2aiHtCACLcB/s320/6696507745_c661b2bc75.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Wimbledon Common windmill: a bucolic scene<br />a short bike ride from a town centre wrecked by excess traffic</td></tr></tbody></table><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But it’s also striking how London’s current dependence on cars is strangling much of what’s worth preserving. London is formed of a collection of villages that happened to be swallowed by a city. Yet town centres, such as Wimbledon’s, that could be the hearts of communities are instead noisy, polluted and divided rather than held together by roads that should be their main public spaces.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My main insight from the last few days, nevertheless, is simply that fog simply sits well on London, like a comfortable sweater on a middle-aged man. It is almost by definition a form of mild, still, temperate weather. In the streets around where I live in genteel Brixton Hill, that’s of a piece with the rows upon rows of Victorian houses. Instead of being built to impress with their opulence, these represent an ideal of restraint, moderation and good taste. The fog heightens that sense still further because it obscures a skyline cluttered with the towers that are increasingly making the City and the banks of the Thames resemble Dubai.</span></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ym5iEN_hFqg/WBZSQG0iYtI/AAAAAAAACos/SVFxwVCTpkEH34LgfQDNKSyCwp7NX9FIQCLcB/s1600/IMG_0386.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ym5iEN_hFqg/WBZSQG0iYtI/AAAAAAAACos/SVFxwVCTpkEH34LgfQDNKSyCwp7NX9FIQCLcB/s320/IMG_0386.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A City of London back alley in last week's mist:<br />an oasis thanks to two millennia of haphazard<br />development.</td></tr></tbody></table><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The effect is thanks partly to fog’s muting effect on the city’s sounds. It may be partly because it so disrupts flights into Heathrow Airport but there has been an eerie calm around my area today thanks to the fog. It’s a very different feeling from our Brooklyn apartment, where we were treated nearly 24 hours a day to a <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/it-was-as-inconvenient-time-for-work.html">cacophony</a> of emergency vehicles, squealing subway trains and building work. The effect has been all the more striking because I can, if I want, ride down urban streets that feel, in the fog’s limited visibility, as deserted as a country lane. London’s haphazard growth has left it with a wealth of such meandering back streets. The <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/grids-lights-and-why-new-yorks-traffic.html">metronomic grid</a> of a more planned metropolis tends to distribute cars more evenly.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I find my horizons closing in metaphorically as well as literally. A foggy day prods one to feel one’s way gently to the local shops, rather than to venture farther afield. Where one’s local town centre is feels mostly like a better-defined question in London than in many other cities. When an improvised bomb exploded at W23rd Street &amp; 6th Avenue in Manhattan in September, for example, there was considerable confusion about how to describe the area (Chelsea? Flatiron?). In London, where some streets were laid out as long ago as the Roman occupation, the delineations mostly seem clearer.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Fog-induced myopia could on such a day trick one into sentimentality about London’s clear, organic <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/what-have-romans-ever-done-for-us-well.html">links with its past</a>. As I rode my bike back from church in this morning’s fog, I even passed an older spinster lady I know heading by bike towards a later service. She was a living embodiment of one of George Orwell’s archetypal pictures of England - “old maids biking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning”.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZWAIYygbNqs/WBZRoCvFkaI/AAAAAAAACoc/aaYl_2nuH4c6jGdeps1YElBQIespS-5mgCLcB/s1600/IMG_0360.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZWAIYygbNqs/WBZRoCvFkaI/AAAAAAAACoc/aaYl_2nuH4c6jGdeps1YElBQIespS-5mgCLcB/s320/IMG_0360.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An unfinished part of the east-west cycle superhighway<br />in Hyde Park: vested interest at work</td></tr></tbody></table><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Yet one of the most striking factors behind the city’s current atmosphere is the prevalence of vested interests among those who control its territory. I was able to cycle across Clapham Common, for example, because the ancient right of Clapham’s people to graze their livestock on a patch of land by the village. Such commons are dotted all across London, often taking up several square miles of empty space. The influence of royalty is still more pervasive. St James’ Park, Hyde Park, Regent’s Park and others occupy vast swathes of Central London thanks to their ownership by the crown. The City of London Corporation, the unelected government of the square mile where the financial industry is concentrated, also owns some big tracts of land, including Hampstead Heath.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">These big, conservative landowners are often fixated on their narrow ideas of how their open spaces should be used and hard to pressure to change. Foot-dragging by Royal Parks currently appears to be holding up further development at the west end of London’s east-west cycle superhighway, yet the body’s very unaccountability makes it impossible to force it to obey the will of the people who ultimately fund it.</span></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cerU-4TlUPY/WBZS46b6snI/AAAAAAAACow/NpP-aOAjMWMyF5cnPXWO4wTiEqBd8hUBACLcB/s1600/IMG_0084.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cerU-4TlUPY/WBZS46b6snI/AAAAAAAACow/NpP-aOAjMWMyF5cnPXWO4wTiEqBd8hUBACLcB/s320/IMG_0084.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">London's new towers might be as unloveable as Dubai's,<br />but a denser, more urban London is probably necessary.</td></tr></tbody></table><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The generally suburban feeling in even large parts of Central London, meanwhile, represents a tendency that’s no less insidious. The UK has for centuries nurtured a cultural bias towards the idea that the countryside is more wholesome and honest than the city. Much of London was built with houses surrounded by gardens big enough to persuade their inhabitants that they were not really in an urban setting. Its housing shortages, congestion and car dependency could all be more easily resolved if the city had embraced the need for density far earlier, as constrained New York has all along been forced to do. While London’s distinctive atmosphere will suffer if more high-rise housing is built, the underground, surface trains, buses and cycling will all gain.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Yet it’s easy on a foggy morning to let those big worries go, at least for a while. Instead, this morning I slipped out of the house with my son and headed off along the deserted, early morning streets towards church. The dampness in the air hung so heavy that we felt big droplets kissing our cheeks as our breath filled the air in front of us. Only the leaves stood out, as if they’d painted themselves red and gold expressly to stand out against the fuzzy-white background.</span></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1ZQsVUG2AF0/WBZTaZzzTNI/AAAAAAAACo4/VCax51gDKIQi5E9ou6guE7IW4Ac0mz5JwCLcB/s1600/IMG_0391.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1ZQsVUG2AF0/WBZTaZzzTNI/AAAAAAAACo4/VCax51gDKIQi5E9ou6guE7IW4Ac0mz5JwCLcB/s320/IMG_0391.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fog on Clapham Common: scene for an Orwellian idyll.</td></tr></tbody></table><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The mystery only increased as we rode out onto the common. Trees looked like grease stains on a bag from a bakery, the mist rolling more densely round the bases of their trunks than round their branches. Other cyclists and runners emerged from the mist then faded back into it.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><span id="docs-internal-guid-f9549881-171a-90f2-82ba-5699f68f13ee"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The most remarkable point, however, was that this scene was unfolding not in some old, idealised landscape painting but a mere five miles from central London. I was, once again, reminded of the remarkable privileges I can enjoy by simply riding a bicycle to get around this big, infuriating but ultimately endlessly beguiling city.</span></span></span></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2016/10/a-cliched-advert-cycling-in-mist-and.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-1948599979964158579Sun, 16 Oct 2016 16:22:00 +00002016-10-25T11:02:40.653-04:00BrooklynCitibikeCS11cycle lane lunacycycle superhighwaysCycling in Londoncycling in New YorkPark SlopeSwiss CottageA British Stand-off, an Unbridged Divide - and Why it's Time for Cycle Campaigners to Change the Conversation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">There was something almost endearingly British about the standoff. In a typical autumnal light drizzle last Saturday in Swiss Cottage, North London, a group of other cyclists and I stood listening to speeches in support of the building of Cycle Superhighway 11, a planned segregated bike route from London’s West End, through Regent’s Park and up to the point where we were standing. Then, a demonstration against the plan arrived. Participants in the two demonstrations did some mild chanting at each other. Afterwards, we went our separate ways.<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5vFxBdzG_Co/WAOhF4fV-SI/AAAAAAAAClU/YMKWRj73SwQ9TlgswgWfk6-kTpsXIUXTgCLcB/s1600/IMG_0350.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5vFxBdzG_Co/WAOhF4fV-SI/AAAAAAAAClU/YMKWRj73SwQ9TlgswgWfk6-kTpsXIUXTgCLcB/s320/IMG_0350.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Protesters against CS11 meet its supporters, in Swiss Cottage:<br />a very British stand-off</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />But, however mild-mannered the two demonstrations at Swiss Cottage might have been, there has been no disguising in the past weeks that demonstrators like those opposing CS11 are growing increasingly vocal in many parts of the developed world. From Community Board meetings in Brooklyn to the pages of daily newspapers in the UK, there have been noisy complaints that newly-introduced or planned cycling facilities are a tyrannical imposition by unfeeling authorities out of touch with the feelings of ordinary people.<br /><br />The UK’s Daily Mail two weeks ago produced the most eye-catching manifestation of the phenomenon, devoting a double-page spread to what it called “cycle lane lunacy,” which it said was “paralysing Britain”. However, there have been plenty of other examples. The Community Board that oversees planning issues in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and surrounding areas is preparing for a meeting where some locals are expected to vent their near-apoplexy over the Citibike bikeshare system’s arrival in their neighbourhood. Local councillors in Ayr, in the West of Scotland, have voted, under pressure from drivers, to remove the town’s only significant protected bike lane.<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RMO2bcllxUE/WAOhnlCzLrI/AAAAAAAAClY/84E8ousidh8JKzSMqPS-Spc7xWSGNyO9wCLcB/s1600/IMG_0356.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RMO2bcllxUE/WAOhnlCzLrI/AAAAAAAAClY/84E8ousidh8JKzSMqPS-Spc7xWSGNyO9wCLcB/s320/IMG_0356.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A cyclist and motorists in Regent's Park: a powerful<br />illustration of the arrangements the anti-CS11 campaigners<br />are fighting to preserve</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />Yet the cycling sceptics and supporters seem as incapable of <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/a-wary-pedestrian-getting-metaphysical.html">meaningful communication</a> as the two groups shouting at each other last Saturday morning. The motorists’ side complains that bike lanes often look empty. Cyclists argue that just shows cycling’s efficiency. Motorists complain that cyclists don’t pay “road tax,” as they do. Cyclists reply that vehicle excise duty in the UK has not been a hypothecated tax for many decades. Motorists complain that congestion is growing worse. Cyclists retort that the people complaining are themselves the traffic. My mind turned, as I rode home from Swiss Cottage, to whether there is some way to narrow this currently apparently unbridgeable divide.<br /><br />A couple of incidents have highlighted to me the width of the communication gap. The first was on September 23 when, after I published in my day job <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/1c8ae594-7fea-11e6-8e50-8ec15fb462f4">a piece</a> about the future of London’s roads, a former colleague wrote to me. He questioned whether it could possibly be true, as I had written in the piece, that some London roads with <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/a-prosecutors-phone-call-remembrance-of.html">cycle superhighways</a> were carrying more people per hour in rush hours than they were before the superhighways were put in place. He also asserted that cycling was, in fact, far more dangerous than people admitted and that, anyway, only the young and fit could do it.<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xcBUuz8wbk8/WAOiA1qe5XI/AAAAAAAAClc/S_M5kJNmmjUspBjGol2bn-tcahuFy4D0gCLcB/s1600/North-South%2BHighway%2Bjam.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xcBUuz8wbk8/WAOiA1qe5XI/AAAAAAAAClc/S_M5kJNmmjUspBjGol2bn-tcahuFy4D0gCLcB/s320/North-South%2BHighway%2Bjam.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Morning rush-hour traffic on the north-south superhighway:<br />no, there's no way this street's carried more people since the<br />segregated bike path went in</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />Then, two weeks ago, a fellow guest at a dinner party asked me how I’d found my just-finished four years in New York. Struggling to sum up the wealth of experience, I said that New York drivers weren’t terribly nice to cyclists. “But isn’t that how everyone feels?” he blurted out, before looking mortified as it dawned on him that I was, in fact, a cyclist.<br /><br />The two incidents reminded me that cyclists, for most people, seem like a strange, alien species, taking unfathomable risks yet somehow eager to suck other, new people into participating in their strange mode of transport. The reminder was all the more stark because it was clear that neither of my interlocutors were people of ill will. They thought their frustration over growing cyclist numbers and efforts to facilitate cycling was simple common sense.<br /><br />It is unsurprising to me that the many people who hold such views see dedicating road space that was previously mainly used by motor vehicles to cycling as a strange, ideologically extreme act. The Swiss Cottage demonstrators were portraying Transport for London’s determination to put in more facilities to encourage cycling as a bizarre, politically-driven effort to punish ordinary people. For many New Yorkers, the notion that a person might ride a bike to work is entirely crazy. That bikes to allow people to do so are now taking up what used to be their normal parking space must seem like a personal insult.<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9WtjS32hCSw/WAOi9V_THYI/AAAAAAAAClk/yPp_GiiFW50GrA47qqk5btv3qkbelsq5ACLcB/s1600/IMG_0173.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9WtjS32hCSw/WAOi9V_THYI/AAAAAAAAClk/yPp_GiiFW50GrA47qqk5btv3qkbelsq5ACLcB/s320/IMG_0173.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Drivers in a traffic jam by an empty bit of superhighway:<br />all, I'm sure, would be calmed to learn they're not paying<br />road tax.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />Yet the response from many cycling advocates could be calculated to heighten the irritation, rather than calming it. For example, cycling activists often retort when drivers complain that cyclists pay no “road tax” that the UK abolished its hypothecated road tax - whose proceeds all went to road building and maintenance - in 1937. While the point is accurate, It is also a prissy, know-it-all one. Like many such responses, it deliberately misses the thrust of what cycling’s critics are trying to say - in this case, that they feel their transport choices are heavily taxed and they cannot see why others should use the same space for free.<br /><br />It would make far more sense to point out that, while motoring is indeed heavily taxed in the UK, the taxes still <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/general-theory-of-cycling-motorists-and.html">fall short</a> of covering the full external costs of the pollution, congestion, crashes and other side-effects. The argument is still clearer in the United States, where no state’s taxes on motoring <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/subway-fares-gas-tax-and-why-its-too.html">cover</a> even the annual cost of road maintenance. A tax-paying cyclist is, consequently, both saving the neighbouring drivers money and, if he or she previously drove a car, reducing the burden on taxpayers.<br /><br />Cycling campaigners end up deploying plenty of other similar “well, actually” arguments about the terms of the debate, rather than the substance. There was a striking example in the last week when Quentin Wilson, a campaigner to shift even more of the burden for motoring onto ordinary taxpayers, tweeted a picture of the most westerly current section of London’s east-west cycle superhighway, just off Parliament Square. “Great new cycle lane but where are the cyclists?” he wrote above a picture of the empty lane.<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qobuE9BpKtk/WAOjhKc0wbI/AAAAAAAACls/4wFVSHKdChsf1apAvcMtd6m6LP-WIxhUwCLcB/s1600/IMG_0371.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qobuE9BpKtk/WAOjhKc0wbI/AAAAAAAACls/4wFVSHKdChsf1apAvcMtd6m6LP-WIxhUwCLcB/s320/IMG_0371.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A group of tourists refutes Quentin Wilson's contention this<br />bike lane goes unused - but also my fellow cyclists' claim<br />it's not open</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />Many cycling advocates accused Wilson of bad faith, responding with pictures facing in the other direction, showing a barrier that marks the end of the superhighway. I saw several people tweet with an excited, “gotcha” tone that the lane wasn’t (actually) even open yet. <br /><br />I’d far rather that activists had pointed out the facts about the section of cycle track in question - and addressed the underlying issue. The section is lightly used because it’s short and doesn’t yet link to any other part of the cycle network. While I’ve used it several times myself, I have also bypassed it sometimes as inconvenient. It would, in addition, be worthwhile pointing out that the superhighways are new, incomplete and that people’s travel patterns always take a while to change after changes to infrastructure.<br /><br />The Wilson case was one of a worrying number where I’ve seen cycling advocates on Twitter and Facebook accusing opponents of something close to false consciousness. Many seem reluctant to accept, for example, that the new cycle superhighways are currently lightly used outside rush hours or that, yes, motor traffic congestion really is <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/a-daily-obstacle-course-problem-denied.html">growing worse</a>. Yet I ride frequently on the superhighways outside rush hours and encounter few other cyclists. Arguments that accepted these points, explained what was going on and explained why cycling facilities can help to resolve the problems would be far more compelling. <br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BlKl3Q8mqiY/WAOkWkT4Q2I/AAAAAAAACl0/Jk7_SJMU4zs-nXfrvXISd2barMIf8-EWQCLcB/s1600/Southwark%2BBridge%2Bbike%2Blane.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BlKl3Q8mqiY/WAOkWkT4Q2I/AAAAAAAACl0/Jk7_SJMU4zs-nXfrvXISd2barMIf8-EWQCLcB/s320/Southwark%2BBridge%2Bbike%2Blane.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A rider uses the Southwark Bridge bike lane, one of those<br />singled out in the Daily Mail for paralysing&nbsp;Britain</td></tr></tbody></table>The problem mirrors developments in the contemporary, polarised political scenes on both sides of the Atlantic. The echo chamber of <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/free-speech-tweeted-threats-and-angry.html">Twitter feeds</a> and Facebook pages full of like-minded people is gradually alienating many people from the idea that any sincere person could disagree with his or her point of view.<br /><br />Such echo chambers encourage their inhabitants to feel particularly enraged at my fellow journalists. One Facebook thread I saw recently discussed how users might punish a reporter who had, the thread’s originator claimed, lied through the heinous act of reporting on the anti-cycling views of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Yesterday, I saw two normally sensible Twitter users discussing how a well-regarded reporter who happens to write critically about cycling must be secretly in some sinister anti-cycling group’s pay. This afternoon, I’ve seen on Twitter a suggestion that an anti-cycling editorial in the Sunday Times might be a sign of a “concerted media campaign building”.<br /><div><br /></div><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LsgbnzXIA6Y/WAOlSJReW4I/AAAAAAAACmE/00preMpTnGYiHazZj4DNno6ewK5kmMZmwCLcB/s1600/IMG_0170%2B%25281%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LsgbnzXIA6Y/WAOlSJReW4I/AAAAAAAACmE/00preMpTnGYiHazZj4DNno6ewK5kmMZmwCLcB/s320/IMG_0170%2B%25281%2529.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sure, this space in Vauxhall is being very<br />well used: but how interesting is it to point<br />that out?</td></tr></tbody></table>This imagining of sinister, hidden agendas behind newspaper articles betrays a frustrating lack of understanding of how actual journalists work. While I understand the London Taxi Drivers’ Association may have undertaken some lobbying and I know that some business groups oppose new cycling provision, it is naive and silly to imagine that reporters automatically bend to obvious efforts to influence them.<br /><br />Nearly every reporter I know is driven by a desire to spot developing trends and to paint a picture of the world that will strike his or her readers as true and illuminating. Cycling campaigners should be far more concerned that large numbers of journalists are independently detecting a mood to dismantle or halt progress on cycling and far less concerned with finding a hidden force behind it.The truth, after all, is that progress on both sides of the Atlantic is fragile. There are strong reactionary movements in parts of Europe and North America.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Many people see provision for cycling as part of a suspect, politically-correct effort to take away their cars. Governments and local authorities have often seemed sheepish about promoting their efforts to support cycling. The arguments for cycling - that it is more space-efficient than motor vehicles, that it causes no pollution, that it costs little to provide for and promotes health - are so obvious as to seem trite. Cycle campaigners would be better, it seems to me, to admit they have a vision for the future that’s different from that of their opponents and argue for their vision’s superiority.<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-O1BtWEpdfAo/WAOlzECJcQI/AAAAAAAACmM/FULFcOf_9yQjUGSVaot1-iqU11XEh6AwgCLcB/s1600/IMG_0360.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-O1BtWEpdfAo/WAOlzECJcQI/AAAAAAAACmM/FULFcOf_9yQjUGSVaot1-iqU11XEh6AwgCLcB/s320/IMG_0360.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Slow progress in Hyde Park: tangible evidence of the<br />fragile nature of recent gains</td></tr></tbody></table>My ride home from Swiss Cottage made clear the costs of failing to get across the case for cycling. Wanting to see progress on the next sections of the east-west superhighway, I took a route through Hyde Park. I at first enjoyed riding down a completed superhighway section down the park’s western end. But then, abruptly, I not only came to the end of the open superhighway but encountered an unannounced closure of the whole southern road through the park.</div><div><br />After my queries about a route for cyclists round the closure drew blank looks from park staff, I instead headed reluctantly out onto the streets of Kensington, one of London’s least cycle-friendly areas. As I did so, the driver of a large Range Rover edged threateningly close to me. When that failed to elicit whatever panicked response the driver was seeking, he leaned long and hard on the vehicle’s horn, issuing a depressing reminder of where real power on the UK’s roads currently lies.</div></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2016/10/a-british-stand-off-unbridged-divide.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-3589055389876211722Sun, 04 Sep 2016 20:23:00 +00002016-09-06T02:59:05.120-04:00ChesterConnah's Quaycycling designcycling in Chestercycling on towpathsNational Cycle Networkstreet designA long-ish ride, confusing signs - and why cycling has to stop being towns' dirty, hidden secret<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">The taxi driver who had arrived to pick up the rest of the family could scarcely have expressed more astonishment if I’d announced I planned to ride my bike to the moon.<br /><br />“You’re really going to ride that to Neston?” he asked, nodding towards my bike. “You know it’s a really long way?”<br /><br />“Of course I am,” I replied with all the nonchalance I could summon up while fixing a puncture. “I can easily ride 100 miles in a day.”<br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></b></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7s-3Hhq1MDY/V8x3AwSbtDI/AAAAAAAACc4/3kxIOQF9Pe4EN_e54NTlexk6A4hOriX8ACLcB/s1600/5288261642_2a66b52760_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7s-3Hhq1MDY/V8x3AwSbtDI/AAAAAAAACc4/3kxIOQF9Pe4EN_e54NTlexk6A4hOriX8ACLcB/s320/5288261642_2a66b52760_z.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Chester Cathedral: heart of a city I know well - but not well</span><br /><span style="font-size: small;">enough to navigate by bicycle, it seems.</span></td></tr></tbody></table>Yet the taxi driver’s scepticism about my plan to ride the 30 or so miles from Bunbury in Cheshire to my parents-in-law’s house near Neston on the Wirral would turn out to be better founded than I expected, albeit for reasons other than simple endurance. Once I’d finally, rather inefficiently, fixed my puncture, I ended up wasting around an hour trying to work out a route through central Chester, even though I know the city reasonably well, had a map of sorts and cycle in the city more than any British city other than London.<br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></b></div>The experience made me realise the fundamental shortcomings of one of the most popular ways of providing <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/a-prosecutors-phone-call-remembrance-of.html">cycling infrastructure in the UK</a> and many other parts of the industrialised world - sticking it on disused rail lines, canal tow paths and other places where it won’t get in motorists’ way. The challenge, I came to realise as I took wrong turn after wrong turn, is that such approaches are fundamentally at odds with how nearly everyone understands cities and how nearly everyone travels. If a determined urban cyclist such as I, with a map, iPhone and some familiarity with the city, can’t find my way through the system, it’s hard to imagine these routes will tempt many novices into starting to cycle.<br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></b></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vOKa93sHjeo/V8x3SYuWz4I/AAAAAAAACc8/70ueVFXDdWgDJcojolINBREwZc3tE4lXgCLcB/s1600/Canal%2Bboat.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vOKa93sHjeo/V8x3SYuWz4I/AAAAAAAACc8/70ueVFXDdWgDJcojolINBREwZc3tE4lXgCLcB/s320/Canal%2Bboat.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">The Winsford, in Bunbury: starting point for the great&nbsp;30-mile</span><br /><span style="font-size: small;">Odyssey to Neston</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />As with many cycle schemes worldwide, however, the primary purpose of the routes through Chester barely seems to be to <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/an-angry-driver-on-8th-st-two-tragedies.html">serve the needs of real, practical cycling</a>. Instead, at points I felt as though I were cycling through some developer’s brochure for the new housing by the banks of the Shropshire Union canal. I imagined how some planning official had sighed with relief when the cycle paths were added to the development plans. The city had ticked the “green and sustainable” box in their programmes. I didn’t sense much confidence that anyone genuinely expected many people to cycle. Until something fundamental changes in how routes are constructed, the circle of poor design that leads to low use that leads to further poor design will remain unbroken.<br /><br />The hold-ups in Chester were a particular pity because some of the early part of the journey was positively uplifting. I was in Bunbury at the end of a week’s holiday cruising the scenic Llangollen Canal. We were heading to the Wirral to see my parents-in-law. After I’d fixed the puncture, I found myself slipping along mostly quiet country lanes, rolling past the entrance to Beeston Castle and negotiating sudden, sharp climbs on bridges over the canal or neighbouring railway line. The experience was a fine advert for the not-always-enjoyable experience of cycling on roads in the British countryside.<br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></b></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-08cc3tt696E/V8x_R5o9yAI/AAAAAAAACdY/KPOn8Ary5fYpzuGGwXvxyVF9HkgLz7BzwCLcB/s1600/Bunbury%2BChurch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-08cc3tt696E/V8x_R5o9yAI/AAAAAAAACdY/KPOn8Ary5fYpzuGGwXvxyVF9HkgLz7BzwCLcB/s320/Bunbury%2BChurch.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">St Boniface's Church, Bunbury: typical of the</span><br /><span style="font-size: small;">picturesque countryside on my trip</span></td></tr></tbody></table>But the trouble started as soon as I reached the outskirts of Chester. My intended route - variously labelled as National Cycle Route 45 or Regional Cycle Route 71 - started taking unsignposted turns through the villages of Waverton and Christleton. It then deposited me onto the Shropshire Union towpath, where the signage was so confusing that at one point I cycled back the way I’d come, convinced I’d taken a wrong turn, only to discover I had been going the right way all along.<br /><br />Something else had also changed. By this time, I was negotiating a towpath through a distinctly unglamorous area on the east side of Chester. The canal was surrounded by the blank walls of neighbouring buildings. I became distinctly conscious of having relatively little space between the blank, overlooking walls and the canal’s forbidding-looking water. Had it been dark or had I been a woman, I’d have felt distinctly uncomfortable. I started to remember Jane Jacobs’ strictures in The Life and Death of Great American Cities about the importance of having eyes on the street, precisely because there were no such eyes on this towpath. I started to feel an urgent need to get away from the canal.<br /><br />That, however, wouldn’t prove easy. Although the new, waterfront developments in central Chester make the towpath there feel far less threatening, it remained nearly impossible to work out which way I had to go. Routes off the towpath that I tried took me towards a meandering, riverside cycle path that would substantially lengthen my journey, onto a busy, car-clogged road engineered to steer traffic away from anywhere useful in Chester’s ancient centre, and onto residential streets labelled as a “home zone” full of traffic calming but with no signposts for cyclists pointing anywhere other than the railway station. An information point for cyclists directed me towards a “black route” and a “brown route”, information that was of no value to someone who did not know the colour of the route towards Neston. Finally, in frustration, I struck out, on busy roads, in the general direction of the cycle path heading where I needed, which runs along an abandoned railway. Having found a bridge that passed under the route, I cycled parallel to it until I found a way on.<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Eue1jPK1UIo/V8x_klAUStI/AAAAAAAACdc/yUoDLy_UrzA9GduIiG7EtYrMyWZBK9VuACLcB/s1600/IMG_0226.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Eue1jPK1UIo/V8x_klAUStI/AAAAAAAACdc/yUoDLy_UrzA9GduIiG7EtYrMyWZBK9VuACLcB/s320/IMG_0226.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Wayfinding on the Chester Greenway: fine for those who've</span><br /><span style="font-size: small;">already managed to find the route</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></b></div>Yet it remained obvious, once I’d made my way onto the old railway line, that the route was hardly being used at all for the purposes that the signs seemed to foresee. While the signs pointed people towards local destinations, the cyclists that I saw either seemed to be training for road-bike racing or, like me, to be making longer journeys. The route was akin to a cycling motorway - a great means of making long, inter-urban journeys but a poor method of undertaking short-distance trips. The light use of the route reminded me of the complaints I heard shortly after the opening of Birmingham’s Metro light-rail system. The system was free of interference from motor vehicles because it ran along an abandoned railway line. But the operators found potential passengers tended to stick to a parallel, slower bus route because it allowed them to stick to the street network, which they could understand.<br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></b></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xSEM3yS2N_k/V8x_7oYIdeI/AAAAAAAACdg/rjU338Eh0A4aIrrAB9bpr8VFSUyRZ1YAQCLcB/s1600/FullSizeRender%2B%25287%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xSEM3yS2N_k/V8x_7oYIdeI/AAAAAAAACdg/rjU338Eh0A4aIrrAB9bpr8VFSUyRZ1YAQCLcB/s320/FullSizeRender%2B%25287%2529.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Speed bumps on the Chester to Connah's Quay</span><br /><span style="font-size: small;">cycle path: further evidence that the builders</span><br /><span style="font-size: small;">of this excellent, high-speed long-distance</span><br /><span style="font-size: small;">cycling route didn't realise that that was</span><br /><span style="font-size: small;">what they were building.</span></td></tr></tbody></table>The shortcomings of the area I sought to navigate were very similar. The centre of Chester - a walled city founded by the Romans - is surrounded by busy arterial roads. There was no real attempt to provide a hospitable cycling environment either on those roads or to carry cyclists across them. In riding along the towpath into the city centre, I had inadvertently trapped myself in the middle of the city walls. There was no pleasant or easy way that I found for getting out again. Both the towpath and the railway line were largely isolated from the system of streets that most people understand to make up a city.<br /><br />The problem, it occurred to me as I rode on to Neston, was that the routes through Chester had not taken cyclists’ needs as their starting point but those of planners charged with finding a use for a troublesome old railway line or for finding a better use for the canal towpath. The attempt to signpost such a route for short-distance journeys seemed to me to misunderstand the way that most people’s short journeys actually work. If going shopping or on some other errand by bike, I will generally need to go to several places, rather than making the kind of clean trip from point A to point B that might be facilitated by a path that takes me entirely off the street network. While I don’t want to ride on a terrifying stretch of high-speed urban road, it’s not, either, a particularly pleasant experience to ride through one of England’s most picturesque, historic cities staring at the featureless grass bank of an old railway cutting.<br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></b></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--Z29yLz3E3M/V8yAmuMerVI/AAAAAAAACdk/5n7sOskt8yg68DTO3ni7p4f83jcF6LqVQCLcB/s1600/Towpath%2Bfrom%2Bcycle%2Bpath.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--Z29yLz3E3M/V8yAmuMerVI/AAAAAAAACdk/5n7sOskt8yg68DTO3ni7p4f83jcF6LqVQCLcB/s320/Towpath%2Bfrom%2Bcycle%2Bpath.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">The Shropshire Union towpath, from the</span><br /><span style="font-size: small;">Greenway: a convenient link - if only</span><br /><span style="font-size: small;">I'd known about it.</span></td></tr></tbody></table>The challenge is not so different from those in New York presented by the city’s heavy reliance on waterside paths like the <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/a-fast-riverside-ride-central-park.html">Hudson River Greenway</a>. Such paths are by their nature cut off from the hustle of city streets. They are useful only if one presupposes that cyclists are willing to make significant detours for the privilege of riding unmolested by drivers. The solution to some of the problems of Birmingham’s tram has been to extend the end of the route out onto the city centre streets, into an area passengers can understand. Rail lines and towpaths would make far better cycling routes if there were a concerted effort to open them up in the <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/a-stunning-view-midtown-ride-and-why.html">densest urban areas</a> so that they feel integrated with surrounding streets, rather than like hunting grounds for the area’s muggers or hiding spots for underage drinkers. The downside to that from planners’ point of view would be that old rail lines or towpaths would no longer be simple, cheap places to hide cycling but would demand changes on neighbouring roads and disruption to traffic flows.<br /><br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Yet the frustration is that there is a genuine role for paths like the Chester to Connah’s Quay path, when they can be found. The opening of a new link to the rail path now allows me to cycle between Chester Station and my parents-in-laws’ house near Neston without braving any part of the frequently scary A540 road, which I used to have to use. Even with my long delay in Chester, I still arrived at my destination only a little after the rest of the family. They’d had to take a taxi into Crewe, a train from Crewe to Chester, another train to Shotton then a third train on to Neston. In areas with public transport options as poor as those, routes that allow one to cycle 30 miles at speed can be a viable alternative. I would even have been able to make the journey fairly quickly if the signposts had been more informative. As I rode out of Chester, I noticed, with a sinking feeling, that my route was passing the canal towpath and there was a link between the two. I could have stayed by the canal and avoided all my frustrations.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></div>For the moment, however, cycling facilities all too often remain projects to be done on the cheap, to revitalise wasteland. They seem far too often aimed at getting bikes out of drivers’ way than at finding a way to get drivers out of cyclists’ way. As long as the fundamental misconceptions about design remain, I’m likely to keep finding myself lonely in using such paths as genuine means of practical transport.</div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2016/09/a-long-ish-ride-confusing-signs-and-why.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-2486928312025653792Sun, 07 Aug 2016 20:05:00 +00002016-09-05T05:55:16.432-04:00Boris JohnsoncongestionCongestion chargingcycle superhighwaysJanette Sadik-KahnLondon cyclingSadik KhanSouthwark BridgeTransport for LondonUberA daily obstacle course, a problem denied - and why I think it's vital to tackle congestion<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">One of the many old habits I’ve resumed since returning to London is to buy my lunch from a branch of Eat cafe very close to my office in Southwark, on the south bank of the River Thames. I head up the stairs from my first-floor desk, leave the building by the second-floor entrance on Southwark Bridge, then cross the road before descending again to reach the cafe, on the riverside walkway.<br /><br />But a key aspect of the experience has unmistakeably changed in the four years I’ve been away in New York. The challenge used to be to dodge cars and trucks speeding across the bridge towards the City of London, the financial district. The task most days now is to pick a way between the long line of vehicles backed up across the bridge.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-V3X2BovRM6Y/V6eRpoGVSAI/AAAAAAAACZE/1hTm893VSn4hTuVtMmOc13x-yWb5e1vvACLcB/s1600/FullSizeRender%2B%25286%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="234" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-V3X2BovRM6Y/V6eRpoGVSAI/AAAAAAAACZE/1hTm893VSn4hTuVtMmOc13x-yWb5e1vvACLcB/s320/FullSizeRender%2B%25286%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Traffic on Southwark Bridge: a barrier between me and<br />my lunchtime pie</td></tr></tbody></table></div>The Southwark Bridge hold-ups are only one manifestation of a gradual worsening of traffic congestion across London in recent years. The problem has grown despite the gradual decline in traffic levels as a result of the Central London congestion charge and the general absurdity of bringing a private car into London. Average motor traffic speeds in London in the first quarter this year were down 3.9 per cent on a year before, according to <a href="http://content.tfl.gov.uk/street-performance-report-quarter4-2015-2016.pdf">Transport for London statistics,</a> despite a 1.1 per cent decrease in the volume of traffic on major roads.<div><br />I first noticed the change on July 7, the day I returned from New York. It took me and my family a good two hours from Heathrow Airport to reach our temporary accommodation in Stepney. Forced to take a taxi by the challenges of moving five suitcases and a bicycle, we sat in nose-to-tail traffic for nearly the entire journey.<br /><br />Yet I have the feeling I’m relatively rare among London cyclists in thinking that this congestion is a serious problem, which cyclists have at least as much a stake as others in having tackled. Most comments from cyclists about the issue on Twitter dismiss the problem as a reflection of motor traffic’s fundamental inefficiency. There has been particular anger over a <a href="http://www.greenerjourneys.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Prof-David-Begg-The-Impact-of-Congestion-on-Bus-Passengers-Digital-FINAL.pdf">flawed report </a>by David Begg, a transport economist whom I’ve known for 20 years, that linked the delays facing bus passengers partly to the building of London’s segregated cycle superhighways on some roads.</div><div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eyST2S01mJs/V6eSHcVaWFI/AAAAAAAACZI/_HpnLOrLzSU4I697eOi1g5J8gZxnVCV5ACLcB/s1600/IMG_0174.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eyST2S01mJs/V6eSHcVaWFI/AAAAAAAACZI/_HpnLOrLzSU4I697eOi1g5J8gZxnVCV5ACLcB/s320/IMG_0174.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yes, the mode on the left wastes road space and, yes,<br />the mode to the right takes up less road space than some<br />critics contend. But it's still worth pondering how scenes like<br />this look to people stuck in traffic jams.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />But, having <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/a-tour-of-tolerant-diversity-horrors-of.html">cycled the past four years in New York</a>, I worry about how present conditions might influence policy, particularly as Sadiq Khan takes over from <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/how-should-cyclists-pedal-electoral.html">Boris Johnson</a>, champion of the superhighways, as mayor. I’ve lived, after all, through the long backlash that followed the departure from office of <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/thick-bridge-cables-police-placard.html">Janette Sadik-Khan</a>, New York’s former pro-cycling transport commissioner, at the end of 2013. For most of the time I was in New York, few new cycling facilities were built and those that were constructed were <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/an-angry-driver-on-8th-st-two-tragedies.html">insultingly inadequate</a>. Those already in place were allowed to decay or become useless through non-enforcement of rules over parking or yielding to cyclists.<br /><br />As long as cyclists downplay or ignore the seriousness of London’s current congestion problems, the debate about how to tackle the problems will be left to others. The ultimate risk is that London’s authorities follow the lead of <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/a-dead-mayor-live-cycling-boom-and-why.html">Ed Koch</a>, New York’s mayor from 1977 to 1989. In 1980, concerned about high fuel prices, Koch installed high-quality protected bike lanes along many of Manhattan’s busiest avenues. Stung by criticism of their effect on congestion and modest use levels, he then went on to rip the lanes out again within weeks. His volte face was so complete that he even sought to have cyclists banned from midtown Manhattan altogether.<br /><br />I should stress, of course, that none of my concerns means I’m accepting the simplistic account of London’s congestion problem that attributes a significant role to the reallocation of road space to the cycle superhighways. Transport planners have known for many years that the number of lanes on a road has far less effect on its capacity than might be supposed. A large amount of congestion comes from motorists’ unnecessary lane-changing, which elimination of a traffic lane can actually reduce. It’s also clear - as David Begg tells me he now accepts - that the figure of 25 per cent for the reduction in road space is a ridiculous exaggeration.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NSd2dZhQ9vI/V6eSwTKtWPI/AAAAAAAACZQ/aO8oOzmlkmEIBIoUXSf5iKcR10CPxhZ5gCLcB/s1600/IMG_0154.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NSd2dZhQ9vI/V6eSwTKtWPI/AAAAAAAACZQ/aO8oOzmlkmEIBIoUXSf5iKcR10CPxhZ5gCLcB/s320/IMG_0154.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The north-south Cycle Superhighway in Waterloo:<br />no mistaking the success</td></tr></tbody></table><br />It’s also unmistakeable that the segregated superhighways are <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/a-prosecutors-phone-call-remembrance-of.html">proving hugely popular</a> as a commuting route. This past Thursday, when we moved back into our house in Brixton, I cycled in the morning rush south down the north-south cycle superhighway. I was astonished at the vast numbers of cyclists heading the other way, north into central London. Pelotons of 30 to 40 riders powered past me in clumps formed by the timing of the traffic lights. Much of the time, there must have been at least as many people using the narrow cycle track as using the far wider road for motor traffic. That striking result has been achieved only a few months after the cycle paths’ opening and before the two main cycle tracks have been extended as far as is eventually intended.<br /><br />It is clear, meanwhile, to anyone observing with an open mind that there have been far more dramatic changes on London’s roads than the handing over of a single lane on a small number of roads to cyclists. For example, the traffic that I dodge as I go to buy my lunchtime pie is currently made up far more than in previous years of heavy dumper trucks going to and from the huge numbers of development sites dotted across the City. The rise of Uber has produced a surge in the numbers of private-hire vehicles on the roads, which Transport for London has very little capacity to restrain.<br /><br />In the past week, I’ve cycled on multiple bits of road whose capacity was restricted for one reason or another. But they included road narrowings for work on both Crossrail, the project to build an east-west rail line right across central London, and the extension of London Underground’s Northern Line to Battersea. Both of the rail projects are generating significant construction traffic and forcing the narrowing of roads in a number of places.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GPtcOge0okg/V6eTYeC8MOI/AAAAAAAACZU/es593dAob1MOoIs7wa2uXRtn46nTgnvnQCLcB/s1600/IMG_0170.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GPtcOge0okg/V6eTYeC8MOI/AAAAAAAACZU/es593dAob1MOoIs7wa2uXRtn46nTgnvnQCLcB/s320/IMG_0170.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cyclists by the new route over Vauxhall<br />Bridge: all modes are contending with<br />restricted road space.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Nevertheless, I keep returning to the feeling I had as I sat in that taxi from the airport on July 7 as I sat in stalled traffic. It was hard as I looked at nearly-empty, mid-morning cycle superhighways not to yearn for my taxi driver to turn onto the invitingly open stretch of tarmac to shorten our interminable journey. If I thought that as someone who would later the same day be cycling along the same routes, it’s hardly surprising if people with less stake in encouraging cycling feel frustrated at the current situation. If that feeling is not to end up leading to the abandonment of the superhighway programme, it is vital that something is done to tackle the on-street congestion.<br /><br />That, David Begg tells me, is the essential argument he was seeking to put across in his report in June on the impact of congestion on bus passengers. While much of the commentary around the report focused on the erroneous 25 per cent figure and some loose phrasing that Prof Begg tells me he also now regrets, it’s hard to escape the report’s central argument. Boris Johnson encouraged changes to the use of London’s streets that were bound to make streets more congested without having the courage to make anti-congestion measures like the congestion charge more effective. The former mayor instead did a great deal to exacerbate the congestion crisis by removing the congestion charge in Kensington and Chelsea. He also replaced high-capacity, articulated buses with the lower-capacity New Bus for London.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UbrG9Llg2VU/V6eUPK_0_vI/AAAAAAAACZk/XdeZjSMKYKICcdxhpLz2-Go8XzVJXe9BACLcB/s1600/IMG_0177.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UbrG9Llg2VU/V6eUPK_0_vI/AAAAAAAACZk/XdeZjSMKYKICcdxhpLz2-Go8XzVJXe9BACLcB/s320/IMG_0177.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Another day, another set of people failed by roads policy</td></tr></tbody></table><br />If cyclists are not to suffer the consequences of Boris Johnson’s policy failures, it is vital that cycle campaigners start to recognise the nature of the competition under way for scarce road space. People who start cycling, after all, are mostly switching to riding from underground, rail or bus so are not self-evidently reducing the burden on the road network.<br /><br />Cycle campaigners consequently have to start noisily pointing out that the present crisis’s causes extend far beyond the installation of cycle lanes. It's also vital to start advocating for measures to manage other modes' use of that limited space. There’s a powerful case, for example, for charging lorries far more for entering central London in peak hours, for encouraging the shift of far more short-distance deliveries by bicycle, rather than van and for installing new, better-protected bus lanes to ensure buses don’t sit trapped in traffic created by demand for Uber and Amazon Prime. It’s absurd that neither taxis nor minicabs currently pay the congestion charge when they enter central London and it’s imperative that they start to do so.<br /><br />These are all sensible policy measures that I’d support even if I weren’t a cyclist. As a person interested in transport policy and determined in particular that bus passengers should get a better deal, I’m convinced on principle that it’s critical to come up with solutions to pointless, wasteful congestion.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T37puZ_P7b0/V6eT7q0QlFI/AAAAAAAACZc/dEBdk9ehJR0vz6c1MUHJAprbto8q5h4_wCLcB/s1600/IMG_0172.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T37puZ_P7b0/V6eT7q0QlFI/AAAAAAAACZc/dEBdk9ehJR0vz6c1MUHJAprbto8q5h4_wCLcB/s320/IMG_0172.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Great Bus Wall of Fleet St: proof of failing policies</td></tr></tbody></table>But an experience on Friday underlined to me how it’s also in cyclists’ selfish interests to deal with congestion. Coming back from a meeting on High Holborn, I rode my way through the quiet urban oasis of Lincoln’s Inn Fields and out onto Fleet St, seeking to make my way to the east-west cycle superhighway. I was greeted, however, with a scene of chaos, a nearly immobile wall of buses crowded onto the historic street, edging forward at well below walking pace.<br /><br />I was in the fortunate position that I could edge my way through cracks between vehicles the few hundred metres I needed to go, find an alley leading down to the Thames and escape to the generously-proportioned, fast-to-travel-on superhighway. I am conscious, however, that the passengers on the buses - a vital form of transport used disproportionately by the poor - lacked that option. They remained stranded as I slipped away. No-one who has London’s interests at heart can think such a situation should be allowed to persist.</div></div></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2016/08/a-daily-obstacle-course-problem-denied.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-6181100950216209376Mon, 25 Jul 2016 13:34:00 +00002016-07-27T16:40:59.818-04:00BrexitCheesegraterCity of Londoncycle superhighwayscyclingcycling in New YorkLondonLondon's spiritThe OvalTower of LondonWalkie TalkieA ride on autopilot, a famous cricket ground - and why I feel more optimistic when I'm on my bike<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><div style="text-align: left;">It was a curious feeling to ride my bike home from church this Sunday along the back-street cycle route that used to be my regular route between home and work. I felt a superficial unfamiliarity - it was my first time back in the area since spending four years<a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/a-tour-of-tolerant-diversity-horrors-of.html"> living in New York</a>. But at the same time so little had changed on many of the roads that a kind of auto-pilot took hold of me. I followed a complex, twisting and turning route with the instinctiveness that comes from having gone the same way literally thousands of times before.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; line-height: 1.38; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3ja3_A2_VOw/V5XNWhlIacI/AAAAAAAACV0/wHuwOvawROodRCgUhNqU-ylEfaegNnLpgCLcB/s1600/FullSizeRender%2B%25284%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3ja3_A2_VOw/V5XNWhlIacI/AAAAAAAACV0/wHuwOvawROodRCgUhNqU-ylEfaegNnLpgCLcB/s320/FullSizeRender%2B%25284%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Canary Wharf's towers loom over the neo-classical<br />splendour of maritime Greenwich: symbols of London's<br />endurance and its adaptability</td></tr></tbody></table>The feeling reflects much of my wider experience of returning to living and cycling in <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/farewell-to-london-where-cyclings.html">London</a>. There are some big, welcome changes - the new, <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/a-prosecutors-phone-call-remembrance-of.html">segregated cycle superhighways</a> being the most obvious. But I’ve been surprised in the last week to find that routes I’ve been using since 1997 - many using facilities designed to encourage cycling by the outmoded method of pushing cyclists towards back streets - still work surprisingly well. I’ve been navigating byways in Covent Garden and quaintly-named alleys in the City of London financial district with almost the same ease as if I’d never been away.<br /><br /></div></div>My experience doesn’t feel like a merely practical lesson in getting around London. I’ve come to feel that it’s telling me something wider about the metropolis as a place. London is in some ways peculiarly resistant to change - or at least has a great propensity to preserve the past. While St Paul’s Chapel in lower Manhattan feels almost miraculously old for dating from before 1776, I rode my bike to church partly down a road first laid down by<a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/what-have-romans-ever-done-for-us-well.html"> the Romans nearly 2,000 years ago</a>. I currently cycle daily past the Tower of London, whose construction started after the Norman Conquest 950 years ago, in the same year that the last Viking kingdom in England was defeated.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ul_q_l30glM/V5XOUf0_QUI/AAAAAAAACWA/ELwLJ7tRwhsfbPh6Of_y3-ZSibUQ-V14wCLcB/s1600/London%2BTowers.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ul_q_l30glM/V5XOUf0_QUI/AAAAAAAACWA/ELwLJ7tRwhsfbPh6Of_y3-ZSibUQ-V14wCLcB/s320/London%2BTowers.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Walkie Talkie, Cheesegrater and Gherkin:<br />what London's new towers' names lack in grace<br />they make up for in memorability</td></tr></tbody></table>Yet the city also feels peculiarly adaptable. While the Tower has changed little in parts since the 11th century, several of the most prominent skyscrapers - including the Cheesegrater and Walkie Talkie - have sprouted just in the four years I’ve been away. While I didn’t want to leave New York, London’s mixture of stability and flexibility makes it a peculiarly comforting place to be living at a time when the world is descending into turmoil. I cycle daily past reminders that the city has withstood the Black Death, the Bubonic Plague, levelling by fire, the horrors of The Blitz and the vast IRA bombs of the early 1990s. If London spoke like a New Yorker, it might be asking fate, “Is that all you got?”<br /><br />I encountered an excellent example of the city’s spirit during my ride back from church. I emerged from a back street onto a stretch of Harleyford Road in Kennington in the shadow of the Oval cricket ground. Surrey County Cricket Club’s ground hosted the first ever international cricket test match in 1880. Traditionally home of the last test of each English season, it is steeped in the history of acts of late summer sporting daring. Yet Harleyford Road - once the highest-stress part of my daily commute - has been enhanced with a new, two-way protected bike lane that carries cyclists all the way over the once-terrifying Vauxhall Bridge into Pimlico. The juxtaposition of the cricket ground’s Victorian grandeur and the bold new transport experiment was striking.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7CcSlqdr-64/V5YRYbdErcI/AAAAAAAACWw/P4zlW9ZrUFsfPy7zsv2EQJ2L7FH4-2Z7QCLcB/s1600/CS5%2BOval.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7CcSlqdr-64/V5YRYbdErcI/AAAAAAAACWw/P4zlW9ZrUFsfPy7zsv2EQJ2L7FH4-2Z7QCLcB/s320/CS5%2BOval.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The glory days of Jack Hobbs, Surrey's master batsman,<br />are a thing of the past at the Oval, over the brick wall in this<br />picture. But so, thankfully, are the days of death-defying<br />cycling manoeuvres over multiple lanes of traffic<br />on Harleyford Road<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>The relative mildness of London’s response to change, of course, reflects partly the city’s being a less bracing place than New York. The <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/a-stunning-view-midtown-ride-and-why.html">crowding</a> of the key bits of New York onto small areas of two islands in New York Harbour produces greater density and a greater propensity to eradicate the past. But it also propagates an impatience with anything that’s not immediately useful or profitable. That certainly helps to encourage some negatives - the <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/first-avenue-harassment-talking-down-to.html">dreadful driving standards</a>, for example, or the peculiar anger over any effort to reallocate street space <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/a-cancelled-bike-lane-crowded-f-train.html">away from car parking</a>. But it also produces an <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/a-concrete-plant-park-chat-roosevelt.html">energy and buzz</a> that aren’t quite there in lower-rise, lower-stress London.<br /><br />I don’t mean, either, to sentimentalise London. I’ve noticed since I returned that my younger colleagues are living further and further from central London, pushed into more and more obscure outer suburbs by crazily spiralling housing costs. I’m protected from them only by the good fortune of having bought a house 12 years ago.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RGSn3VAEUxk/V5YTIXjymjI/AAAAAAAACW8/rL33GXpgFikJdXBNK4rfBkGG5dR-5o3XACLcB/s1600/Park%2BSlope%2Bmural.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RGSn3VAEUxk/V5YTIXjymjI/AAAAAAAACW8/rL33GXpgFikJdXBNK4rfBkGG5dR-5o3XACLcB/s320/Park%2BSlope%2Bmural.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A graffiti mural in Park Slope, Brooklyn: a reminder of<br />New York's more frenetic street life</td></tr></tbody></table>The riots in many parts of the city in 2011 suggest many members of poor minority groups feel little stake in London’s wellbeing. Some of the UK’s poorest people continue to live in such <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/why-cyclist-should-write-londons.html">jarring proximity </a>to members of the global super-rich that it seems remarkable the city has maintained such relative social peace.<br /><br />The city’s tolerance of change and incomers is perhaps the flipside of a rather English reserve about them. In the serviced apartment complex where my family, my bike and I are currently living, no-one seems perturbed that the staff all speak Romanian to each other. But most people barely seem to notice the staff at all.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Bm6SSnB-39o/V5ka1uXDfFI/AAAAAAAACX0/xx6GNm31sukNafoJE9Cb_qqsIztvOqg6wCLcB/s1600/Brick%2BLane%2Bmosque.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Bm6SSnB-39o/V5ka1uXDfFI/AAAAAAAACX0/xx6GNm31sukNafoJE9Cb_qqsIztvOqg6wCLcB/s320/Brick%2BLane%2Bmosque.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Brick Lane Jamme Masjid - formerly the Spitalfields<br />Great Synagogue, formerly London's Huguenots' Neuve<br />Eglise: symbol of London's flexibility</td></tr></tbody></table>Nevertheless, I am reconnecting with the city’s distinctive spirit. I rode down on Saturday, for example, to Greenwich through the Isle of Dogs. I cycled part of the way with a group of boys whose accents were a strange mixture of Caribbean, South Asian and traditional cockney. Given the mixture of the language and their own ethnicites, their term for each other - “bruv” - sounded like a strangely universal embrace.<br /><br />Our temporary accommodation, meanwhile, is near the Brick Lane Mosque - a building famously built by Huguenot refugees, subsequently taken over by Jewish refugees and now a place of worship for east London’s Bangladeshis. Its history seems mainly to be a source of some pride, rather than anguish over what has been lost.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-b8n64OB3uxM/V5XPLvS5a-I/AAAAAAAACWI/JxrrujZN7CMGtvhXuJdrDZCSUqNB1m1GgCLcB/s1600/IMG_0127.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-b8n64OB3uxM/V5XPLvS5a-I/AAAAAAAACWI/JxrrujZN7CMGtvhXuJdrDZCSUqNB1m1GgCLcB/s320/IMG_0127.JPG" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Striking juxtaposition: a man rides down a few months old<br />cycle track, past a tower whose origins go back 950 years</td></tr></tbody></table>These positive feelings, of course, could prove fragile. As the UK’s wealthiest, most international city, London has far more to lose from the economic pain of leaving the European Union than some other parts of the UK that, unlike London, voted in favour of leaving. Having experienced the trauma of the July 2005 terror attacks on London, I know that the city’s relative calm could be tested if the successor to the Nice or Munich terror attacks takes place on London streets.<br /><br />But I ride daily amid a city that feels as if it’s flourishing, despite the abundant evidence of past catastrophes. The ground below Upper Thames Street where I ride each morning contains piers abandoned by the Romans when they left the city in ruins. To my right as I ride to work is the monument to the dead of the city’s 1666 Great Fire. A mere recitation of the grim facts of London's current situation makes it feel as if it's undergoing another historic disaster. But, riding a bike amid the ghosts of past horrors overcome, it's far easier to feel optimistic.</div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2016/07/a-ride-on-autopilot-famous-cricket.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)3London, UK51.5073509 -0.1277582999999822351.1912379 -0.77320529999998222 51.8234639 0.51768870000001777tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-640770298686532033Sun, 10 Jul 2016 23:12:00 +00002016-07-29T12:26:40.191-04:00Andrew GilliganBoris Johnsoncycle superhighwaysCycling in Londoncycling in New York CityJanette Sadik-KhanNew York Taxi and Limousine CommissionA prosecutor's phone call, remembrance of stresses past - and why I'm glad of a public policy miracle<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">It was on Friday afternoon, as I was sitting at my new desk in my office in London, that a phone call took me lurching back into the stresses of my daily cycle commute in New York.<br /><div><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DUuQN65gP5M/V4NEyffYOMI/AAAAAAAACT4/-00Cb7RVWRgmd3py4YzuKK0w_xIUnsBsgCLcB/s1600/FullSizeRender%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DUuQN65gP5M/V4NEyffYOMI/AAAAAAAACT4/-00Cb7RVWRgmd3py4YzuKK0w_xIUnsBsgCLcB/s320/FullSizeRender%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 17.664px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The North-South Cycle Superhighway, at Southwark Street: surprising balm for the soul.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div>The call came from a prosecutor at the New York <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/an-idle-hour-worried-taxi-drivers-and.html">Taxi and Limousine Commission</a> who was dealing with a complaint I’d submitted in May. Within a few minutes, I was being sworn in and examined at a hearing of the commission’s tribunal. It was the first time, after a succession of driver no-shows and last-minute plea bargains, that I’ve actually had to testify against a driver. Then, I was cross-examined by the attorney for a driver who’d first tailgated me and a group of other cyclists then driven down a street yelling abuse at me. I felt my heart racing and my temper rise.</div><div><br /></div><div>But it was only a little later, as I discussed the joys of London’s new cycle superhighways with colleagues, that it dawned on me why the call from New York had set off quite so many fight-or-flight responses. Having arrived back in the UK with my family early on Thursday, I’d had two days of mostly stress-free cycling riding on London’s new segregated cycle tracks. The experience, it dawned on me, had lifted a burden of <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-frightened-old-man-angry-taxi-driver.html">anxiety</a> that had sat on me all the time I battled with New York’s drivers. As I recounted the tailgating then dealt with the cross-examination from the driver’s attorney, the burden’s full weight came crushing down on me again.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 17.664px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That low-stress riding has produced in me - to my own surprise - an unusual feeling of lightness of spirit when I’m on my bike. This weekend, staying with my parents-in-law in rural Cheshire, I noticed when I took my bike on a muddy, sometimes hard-to-navigate country trail that I was willing to tackle trickier slopes and tougher surfaces than I had been when riding similar routes while living in New York. There are undoubtedly complex public policy questions about how much road space in London to allocate to bicycles and how much to other traffic. But, for me in the short term, the changes’ effect has been to liberate a little joy in my soul.</span></span><br /><span style="line-height: 17.664px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span> <br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4vhDhNBJoPY/V4LQS81vjRI/AAAAAAAACS4/zbYDhAwvXLoB-7UtS4Kj4_TGGxIZDVviACLcB/s1600/Wirral%2Btrail.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4vhDhNBJoPY/V4LQS81vjRI/AAAAAAAACS4/zbYDhAwvXLoB-7UtS4Kj4_TGGxIZDVviACLcB/s320/Wirral%2Btrail.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">A muddy section of the Wirral Trail, in Cheshire:</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">site of my unaccustomed boldness</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 17.664px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.664px;"><br /></span></span></span><span style="line-height: 17.664px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.664px;">Even if I’d still been in New York, however, it would still have been stressful to relive the events of the morning of May 12 - all the more so because they reflected failings typical of New York’s streets. I’d complained about a taxi driver who drove close behind me and some other cyclists, trying to honk us out of his way, as we moved to turn left at the busy intersection of Canal and Allen Streets. After I photographed the driver so that I could report him, he drove parallel to me as I rode up Allen Street, shouting what sounded like abuse at me as I rode in the street’s - thankfully protected and segregated - bike lane.</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">The incident reflected many of the weaknesses of New York’s provision for cyclists. The two blocks of Canal St where I was riding connect the Manhattan Bridge bike path - one of the city’s busiest cycling locations - with the bike lanes on Allen St, a critical, high-quality, north-south route. Yet those two blocks are busy, chaotic and </span><a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/a-barging-garbage-truck-slippery.html" style="line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">devoid of any cycling provision</a><span style="line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"> save for some rather optimistic “sharrow” markings. Those are generally obscured beneath double-parked vehicles.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 17.664px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 17.664px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Conditions were particularly challenging on the morning in question because Canal St had just been milled - had its surface removed prior to laying of new tarmac. The manhole covers and other ironwork - always potential landmines of the New York streetscape - were sticking up well above the temporary surface, presenting a high-stakes obstacle course for commuting cyclists.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px; line-height: 17.664px;"></span></span></span><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sHIvJypl-QE/V4LQlwkzWZI/AAAAAAAACS8/6P352ZD_GX0K66u7-feBXb_PKCYijug7gCLcB/s1600/IMG_3373%2B%25282%2529%2B%25281%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sHIvJypl-QE/V4LQlwkzWZI/AAAAAAAACS8/6P352ZD_GX0K66u7-feBXb_PKCYijug7gCLcB/s320/IMG_3373%2B%25282%2529%2B%25281%2529.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">The honking taxi driver of milled Canal St:</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">a picture to get the stress hormones racing</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px; line-height: 17.664px;"></span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="line-height: 22.08px;">By contrast, the striking feature of my rides so far on London’s new cycle tracks is that they provide seamless journeys. The paths are generally continuous, mostly wide and, so far at least, have excellent, high-quality surfaces. I can think of almost no piece of cycling infrastructure in New York - including the Hudson River Greenway, the city’s best route - that so completely eliminates the challenge for cyclists of interacting with drivers.</span></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="line-height: 22.08px;"><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="line-height: 22.08px;">The London routes don’t, like so much provision in New York, disappear at the points where conditions get most challenging. From my temporary accommodation in Limehouse, East London, I zipped to work on Thursday and Friday down Upper Thames Street, a traffic sewer through the City of London financial district. Riding there used to involve terrifying games of chicken with big trucks and black taxis. Last week, it was, for the first time I can recall, a positive pleasure to ride on, thanks to the east-west cycle superhighway, which bore me down towards Southwark Bridge untroubled by any interactions with the neighbouring vehicles. The contrast with the treatment of difficult areas in New York - say, the section of Second Avenue where cyclists have to deal with traffic turning into the Queens-Midtown Tunnel - could scarcely be more stark.</span></span></span><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RoSM_M0pLTc/V4LRuJLnTvI/AAAAAAAACTI/LSeD4V2P0ZQVVmGEQ3R0q1F2zapKhBGQgCLcB/s1600/FullSizeRender%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RoSM_M0pLTc/V4LRuJLnTvI/AAAAAAAACTI/LSeD4V2P0ZQVVmGEQ3R0q1F2zapKhBGQgCLcB/s320/FullSizeRender%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Upper Thames Street: a cycling paradise if not exactly</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">regained, at least found for the first time</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet the grudging tone of those involved in the Taxi and Limousine Commission hearing was at least as depressing as the recollection of the incident itself. There seemed to be a general feeling that for a group of cyclists to be followed closely by an angrily honking taxi driver wasn’t really that big a deal. The defence attorney, meanwhile, demanded to know if I’d been in the bike lane when honked at. The question suggested the attorney didn’t know the street had no bike lane. It was built on the false assumption that bike lanes should serve as prisons for cyclists, not havens. It also entirely missed the point that a left-turning cyclist could scarcely stay in a bike lane on the right, even had one existed.</span><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0zUnO6HRBRw/V4LSjsJxiAI/AAAAAAAACTU/8GTnp0bY1jkI3F1k3cbjlR4q4hiiqXE4wCLcB/s1600/FullSizeRender%2B%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0zUnO6HRBRw/V4LSjsJxiAI/AAAAAAAACTU/8GTnp0bY1jkI3F1k3cbjlR4q4hiiqXE4wCLcB/s320/FullSizeRender%2B%25282%2529.jpg" width="240" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">The Victoria Embankment not only hosts</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">those darling little lights - but an actual,</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">well-designed cycle track junction</span><br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">London’s new cycle tracks, by contrast, feel like acts of generosity. They are mostly wide and those I’ve used so far seem well designed. My enthusiasm for them isn’t unique. One colleague - previously only an intermittent commuter cyclist - raved to me about how she could scarcely believe London had built such things. “They’ve got those little lights!” she squealed excitedly, referring to the small repeater traffic lights positioned at cyclists’ eye level. The other striking point is how quickly it’s possible to get around a city by bike when one isn’t constantly dodging around cars double-parked in bike lanes or grappling with “mixing zones” of vehicles trying to cross one’s path. My bike computer is consistently telling me I’m going around 1mph faster on average than I used to in New York.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">The tracks’ building is clearly an act of political boldness that far outstrips even </span><a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/thick-bridge-cables-police-placard.html" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Janette Sadik-Khan’s efforts</a><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to put in cycling infrastructure in New York. The scale of that boldness was clear to me as my family and I rode on Thursday morning from Heathrow Airport to our temporary accommodation. At mid-morning, as we were making the trip, motor traffic remained heavy and very slow-moving while, next to us, wide, well-designed cycle lanes stood, getting only relatively light use.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is hard to imagine any contemporary senior New York politicians’ having the nerve to try to push such a network not only through the city council but also through the myriad of community boards that are </span><a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/a-cancelled-bike-lane-crowded-f-train.html" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">determined to obstruct progress</a><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">. My experience of testifying before the taxi and limousine commission’s tribunal was certainly a reminder that there is so far </span><a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/an-angry-driver-on-8th-st-two-tragedies.html" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">not even the vaguest consensus</a><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in New York that cyclists have a legitimate place in urban transport.</span><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 17.664px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 17.664px; white-space: pre-wrap;">In London, meanwhile, I share my colleague’s wonder at the cycle tracks’ construction. The tracks are associated closely with Boris Johnson, a bumbling mayor whose other contributions to British public life - including his role in the recent European Union referendum - have been almost entirely negative. The tracks were shepherded through by Andrew Gilligan, Johnson’s “cyclist tsar,” who received substantial, justified criticism for his shoddy methods in the 2004 Hutton Inquiry into the suicide of David Kelly, a government scientist whom Gilligan had used as a source.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nd9ypg2Nr7A/V4LTWGQan1I/AAAAAAAACTc/1dVWWoAHe0MdxsF4y2YFKUMC_hHh95BtwCLcB/s1600/FullSizeRender%2B%25283%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nd9ypg2Nr7A/V4LTWGQan1I/AAAAAAAACTc/1dVWWoAHe0MdxsF4y2YFKUMC_hHh95BtwCLcB/s320/FullSizeRender%2B%25283%2529.jpg" width="240" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">London cyclists like these were yearning</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">for a miraculous transformation.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Astonishingly, they seem to have found one.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">The tracks came to be built only after Johnson rashly built a network of </span><a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/farewell-to-london-where-cyclings.html" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">extraordinarily dangerous “cycle superhighways”</a><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"> consisting only of paint on very busy main roads. The decision to build something better followed the justified outcry over the number of cyclists killed riding on the old super highways. That such a flawed process and flawed individuals could end up producing excellent, well-designed infrastructure feels like a public policy miracle.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">But, of course, the miracle is a limited one. The cycle tracks cover only a relatively small area of central London. When not on them, I’ve already had some negative experiences. I was, for example, chased down a bus lane on Brixton Road on Thursday by an impatient van driver who should not have been in the lane at the time. This evening, as I cycled home from Euston station, on one of the few parts of the journey where I wasn’t using protected infrastructure, a minicab driver cut me off as I sought to pull out round a parked car. I can only hope that the cycle tracks are not so bold a step that they end up </span><a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/a-dead-mayor-live-cycling-boom-and-why.html" style="line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">ripped out</a><span style="line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">, as New York’s first experiments in segregated bike lanes were, when the complaints from motorists complaining about congestion became too much.</span></span></div></div></div></div><div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></div></div><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">The other worries are for the future, however. I continue in many ways to pine for New York - its unique atmosphere, the open, friendly people, even the excitement of discovering the city by bike. But London’s bold cycling experiment makes me glad, at least when I’m on my bicycle, that I’m here.</span></div></div></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2016/07/a-prosecutors-phone-call-remembrance-of.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-574373703000306940Mon, 04 Jul 2016 14:00:00 +00002016-11-09T10:43:32.348-05:00Brooklyn-Queens TourdiversityDiversity PlazaJackson HeightsNew York CityNew York cyclingOrlandoOrlando shootingPulseQueenstoleranceTransportation AlternativesA tour of tolerant diversity, the horrors of its opposite - and why I'm sorry to say goodbye<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal">I was waiting in line for Salvadorean food, standing next to a black fellow cyclist after the Transportation Alternatives Brooklyn-Queens Tour through <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>’s two most diverse boroughs, when the announcement came for a moment of silence. Because we’d been riding our bikes, few of us knew what had happened. <i>“Fifty</i> people?” the rider next to me asked, in a tone of shock. I started trying to work out how one person could possibly have killed so many people.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">By the end of June 12, however, I was not only learning far more about the day’s <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/e5bfc822-3183-11e6-ad39-3fee5ffe5b5b">appalling massacre </a>at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, but on my way to a hotel near the scene to report on it. The job of covering the attack was all the more traumatic because I’d, unusually, remained ignorant for so long of its happening.</div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dmEGBSz_2mA/V3pomG3lxCI/AAAAAAAACQo/ppHkd7NA4Oo3sObB6aWHWVDdqnp51cOKgCLcB/s1600/Citi%2BField.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dmEGBSz_2mA/V3pomG3lxCI/AAAAAAAACQo/ppHkd7NA4Oo3sObB6aWHWVDdqnp51cOKgCLcB/s320/Citi%2BField.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cyclists wait at Citi Field to start the Brooklyn-Queens<br />Tour. The same parking lot was the scene, later the same day,<br />of a horrific revelation for many riders</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Yet the experience of having ridden my bike through Brooklyn and especially multicultural Queens before heading to <st1:city w:st="on">Orlando</st1:city> kept informing my thinking over the following two days. The areas where I’d been riding are some of the most diverse in any major western city, with people from countries all over the globe living next to each other in a miracle of tolerant diversity. I couldn’t help but wonder what made the difference between very different people’s ability to live together in areas like <st1:placename w:st="on">Crown</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Heights</st1:placetype> – where observant Jews live next to black people from the Caribbean – and the impulse that drove the hate-filled <st1:city w:st="on">Orlando</st1:city> attacker.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">My reactions were all the stronger because I’d undertaken the Brooklyn-Queens Tour as a farewell to <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>before I leave the city to return to <st1:city w:st="on"><a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2012/09/farewell-to-london-where-cyclings.html">London</a></st1:city>on July 6. The looming deadline has made me think harder about why I love the atmosphere of <st1:city w:st="on">New York City</st1:city>so deeply, despite the chaos – even <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2016/02/thick-bridge-cables-police-placard.html">the corruption</a> - of much of the city’s functioning. I’ve decided that the chaos and its loveability are closely tied up in each other. It’s just unfortunate that the chaos overpowers the loveability on the roads, while it’s mostly the other way round everywhere else.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">From the very start of my day’s riding on June 12, I’d been reminded how a cyclist – riding at moderate speeds on surface streets - is uniquely placed to appreciate the intricacy of the stitching that holds together <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>’s ethnic patchwork. The morning of the Brooklyn-Queens Tour, I started at my home in traditionally <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Italian-American</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Carroll</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Gardens</st1:placetype></st1:place>to ride to Citi Field, the New York Mets’ stadium, 13 miles away, for the start of the event. The trip took me through mainly African-American housing projects near the <st1:placename w:st="on">Brooklyn</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Bridge</st1:placetype>, Hasidic Jewish South Williamsburg, heavily Polish Greenpoint then over the <st1:placename w:st="on">Greenpoint</st1:placename><st1:placename w:st="on">Avenue</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Bridge</st1:placetype>into areas of <st1:place w:st="on">Queens</st1:place> that are variously East Asian, South Asian and Hispanic.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TKOFENpF7wM/V3ppGg4WL0I/AAAAAAAACQs/HYFB0cFBnWgGZgPkCnAhm9j8potPJOVbgCLcB/s1600/Diversity%2BPlaza.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TKOFENpF7wM/V3ppGg4WL0I/AAAAAAAACQs/HYFB0cFBnWgGZgPkCnAhm9j8potPJOVbgCLcB/s320/Diversity%2BPlaza.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Diversity Plaza: a twee name for a high ideal</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">At one point where a particularly large number of seams come together, in <st1:placename w:st="on">Jackson</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Heights</st1:placename>, I rode along a block recently rather tweely renamed “<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Diversity</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Plaza</st1:placetype></st1:place>”. A nearby block is almost exclusively filled with Tibetan restaurants and grocery stores, while other shops nearby sell saris to local Tamils and a Chinese supermarket supplies the neighbourhood’s Chinese. The area hums to the tune of dozens of different languages.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The boundaries between the different groups’ areas are porous and unclear. The Chinese supermarket in Jackson Heights, for example, stocks some Filipino and Vietnamese food because it recognises that the area’s far less uniform than, say, Manhattan’s Chinatown.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The arrangements are the exact opposite of what I remember seeing when I visited <st1:country-region w:st="on">Bosnia</st1:country-region>in 1995 during its war of independence. As I rode with a bus full of refugees from <st1:city w:st="on">Tuzla</st1:city> to <st1:city w:st="on">Split</st1:city>, we kept encountering checkpoints still operating after the brief war between the Bosnian government and Bosnian Croats. The papers of the people on the bus – mostly Bosniaks, as Bosnian Muslims call themselves – all had to be carefully checked to prevent unauthorised crossing of ethnic dividing lines. While the streets of, say, Little Italy were once guarded by men who kept strangers out, there are no barriers for a contemporary New Yorker to wandering around densely-packed areas full of people who look different from him or her.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">A bicycle saddle is also an excellent vantage point to see how little obvious planning has gone into forming the city’s ethnic jigsaw puzzle. Old groceries get converted into churches as new groups take over areas that once belonged to another. A grand former synagogue on <st1:street w:st="on">Pike St</st1:street> in <st1:place w:st="on">Lower Manhattan</st1:place> is now a mixture of a Buddhist temple, businesses and apartments. The city’s history is that it’s largely when people are able to choose their own patterns of settlement that the process goes most smoothly.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m-r-tXiXId4/V3ppgMlg2yI/AAAAAAAACQ0/mRr-TIX3KNwsn0c0nOFLT4PLtcmbDSzbwCLcB/s1600/BQE%2Bviaduct%252C%2BHamilton%2BAvenue.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m-r-tXiXId4/V3ppgMlg2yI/AAAAAAAACQ0/mRr-TIX3KNwsn0c0nOFLT4PLtcmbDSzbwCLcB/s320/BQE%2Bviaduct%252C%2BHamilton%2BAvenue.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A viaduct on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway:<br />Robert Moses' sensitive approach to city planning<br />on full display</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">It is certainly no coincidence that the neat mind of <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-terrifying-avenue-new-mayor-and-how.html">Robert Moses</a> – the “master builder” who transformed <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state> in the mid-20<sup>th</sup> century – abhorred both diversity and the narrow local streets where it flourishes. In the years after the second world war, he demolished multiple areas that he regarded as slums, replacing them with whiter, duller institutions such as the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Lincoln</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place> or expressway roads. It was obvious at many points along my ride how highways such as Moses’ Brooklyn-Queens Expressway severed once-thriving communities. The city is in many ways only just recovering from his insensitive desire to destroy in the course of building.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Perhaps the truest expression I’ve encountered of <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>’s diversity is a scene I encountered on my bicycle while apartment-hunting four years ago. In a tyre shop on <st1:street w:st="on">Coney Island Avenue</st1:street>in <st1:place w:st="on">Brooklyn</st1:place> one evening, white-robed men were hunched over drums performing a Sufi Islamic ritual. The ceremony looked imported unchanged from the back streets of the <st1:place w:st="on">Maghreb</st1:place>. It was being performed in a space intended for another purpose. Yet it was going on not only in full view of the street but on an avenue a mere five blocks from <st1:street w:st="on">Ocean Parkway</st1:street>, the heart of one of the western world’s most thriving Jewish neighbourhoods.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cZaJCLohbiU/V3pp2GGSvNI/AAAAAAAACQ8/cy92wGuQtpU4ew2SUTr2CIoR_7lwljVJQCLcB/s1600/Ocean%2BParkway.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cZaJCLohbiU/V3pp2GGSvNI/AAAAAAAACQ8/cy92wGuQtpU4ew2SUTr2CIoR_7lwljVJQCLcB/s320/Ocean%2BParkway.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Jewish couple wait to cross Ocean Parkway - an ethnic<br />stronghold, yet close to diversity.</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">During the 40-mile Brooklyn-Queens Tour, the starkest reminder of <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>’s remarkable success in building reasonably tolerant diversity was my ride through <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Crown</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Heights</st1:placetype></st1:place>. The area was the last to feature full-scale inter-racial rioting in <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state> – in 1991, when a fatal crash involving a driver in a leading rabbi’s entourage and a Guyanan man set off three days’ clashes between black people and observant Jews. Yet, riding through the area on the Sunday morning of the tour, there were the same ambiguities as in other areas about the boundaries separating different groups. I noticed, <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/07/an-old-fashioned-prejudice-wasted-bronx.html">with a sigh</a>, that the congregation of a large, black Pentecostal church had blocked a stretch of bike lane and sidewalk as they parked for Sunday morning worship. The next moment, I was seeing boys wearing smart white shirts and kippahs heading off to Sunday morning religious classes.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It is, of course, far easier to describe what a peaceful city looks like than to describe why someone like Omar Mateen, the Orlando killer, erupts into hate-filled violence. I got the call asking whether I could go down to <st1:city w:st="on">Orlando</st1:city>as I approached home at the end of a total of nearly 70 miles’ riding. Within a few hours, I’d made my excuses for a dinner party I’d been looking forward to, taken myself to <st1:placename w:st="on">LaGuardia</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Airport</st1:placetype> – near where I’d started my ride at Citi Field – and checked into a suburban <st1:city w:st="on">Orlando</st1:city>hotel.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HMHZhumJB74/V3pqhBab8fI/AAAAAAAACRI/ydneUxiDhoEh0YIigQ4Zo_bSsgB5u7kGQCLcB/s1600/Reporters%2Bin%2BOrlando.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HMHZhumJB74/V3pqhBab8fI/AAAAAAAACRI/ydneUxiDhoEh0YIigQ4Zo_bSsgB5u7kGQCLcB/s320/Reporters%2Bin%2BOrlando.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reporters near the scene of the Orlando massacre:<br />feeding an unspeakable horror into the 24-hour news cycle</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Starting reporting the next morning, I headed to a family reunion centre near the massacre site and <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e5bfc822-3183-11e6-ad39-3fee5ffe5b5b.html#axzz4DRDENKQx">spoke to César Flores</a>, a Guatemalan immigrant whose 26-year-old daughter, Mercedez Marisol Flores, was among the 49 people Mateen killed before he was himself shot. Exactly 24 hours after I’d been riding round Brooklyn and <st1:place w:st="on">Queens</st1:place>marvelling at their peaceful diversity, I watched Mr Flores hold his phone to show reporters a Facebook picture of his daughter, surrounded with the Pride flag colours. This, it was clear, was the price of&nbsp; intolerance of diversity.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“She was a very happy girl all the time, a good student, a hard worker,” he said, tearfully. “But she’s gone.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I began to make the connections between my Sunday experience in <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state> and my reporting in <st1:city w:st="on">Orlando</st1:city> on Monday evening, as I attended a <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7ee2e4c0-31d5-11e6-ad39-3fee5ffe5b5b.html#axzz4DRDENKQx">vigil for the dead</a> in downtown <st1:city w:st="on">Orlando</st1:city>. Speaker after speaker pleaded, essentially, for the values that have rescued <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state> from the low point of the Crown Height riots. They called for gun control – an area where <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state> is about as strict as the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region> constitution allows – and for different social groups to safeguard each others’ interests. Muslim speakers defended gay people’s rights, while speakers from gay advocacy groups denounced any potential reprisals against Muslims.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YL-Zrq-xSbw/V3prmYrvqmI/AAAAAAAACRg/868j3u6rENQeARE915aUfVs8XZMH3YEkwCLcB/s1600/Vigil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YL-Zrq-xSbw/V3prmYrvqmI/AAAAAAAACRg/868j3u6rENQeARE915aUfVs8XZMH3YEkwCLcB/s320/Vigil.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Orlando vigil: a critical reminder of the importance<br />of "safe spaces"</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">It was the praise for the role of the Pulse club among <st1:city w:st="on">Orlando</st1:city>’s gays that finally drove &nbsp;the point about diversity home. Several speakers described gay clubs as “safe spaces,” vital to giving lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people the self-confidence to deal with a sometimes hostile wider world. The remark made me think of the multi-ethnic New York I’d witnessed both during the Brooklyn-Queens Tour - and during all my four years riding in the city - as a complex mix of safe places and meeting points between communities. While it’s unknown precisely what mixture of mental disturbance, islamist radicalism and homophobia drove Omar Mateen, it’s striking that such attackers often seem to come from less cosmopolitan, self-confident places. Greater tolerance should at least play a role in averting future horrors.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Not, of course, that I should sentimentalise <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>. During nearly all the sections of the tour that involved riding on roads with cars, I was jostling with drivers for <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/10/an-oafish-limousine-driver-english.html">space</a>. The principle that a “safe space” creates an environment for healthy interaction with others extends, I think, to well-designed protected bike lanes, of&nbsp; which the city still has far too few. The city’s ethnic geography is not entirely a result of happy happenstance. Black people were barred for decades from large areas and economic injustice continues to keep some people in less desirable areas. The New York Police Department continues to do a <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/05/an-angry-off-duty-police-man-rainy.html">far less good job</a> than it should do. The police shrug at road safety problems – and it is becoming gradually clearer that police corruption drives many of their decisions about how to manage the roads.</div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DGAfE038YOY/V3pq9tv3_UI/AAAAAAAACRQ/--5NlGYHQyATpF3iwIj1Zuvmoz-eDkAVQCLcB/s1600/Graduation%2BHall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DGAfE038YOY/V3pq9tv3_UI/AAAAAAAACRQ/--5NlGYHQyATpF3iwIj1Zuvmoz-eDkAVQCLcB/s320/Graduation%2BHall.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The graduation ceremony at Brooklyn College: a case study<br />in the value of "defending the hyphen".</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But an event on June 21 underlined for me the privileges of having lived and cycled four years amid this bracing, if untidy, experiment. I rode from my office in <st1:city w:st="on">Manhattan</st1:city> down to <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Brooklyn</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">College</st1:placetype></st1:place> in Flatbush that evening to see my daughter graduate from middle school. For me, a highpoint of the event was a brief address from Eric Adams, <st1:place w:st="on">Brooklyn</st1:place>’s borough president, in which he told us it was vital to “defend the hyphen”. It was critical, he said, in an era of intolerance to celebrate both the diversity in a <st1:place w:st="on">Brooklyn</st1:place> full of African-Americans, Puerto Rican-Americans, Russian-Americans and the factors that made them all Americans too. It was a message that was easy to appreciate in a hall packed full of families originally from Asia, the former Soviet Union and South Asia all seeking similar success for their children. But it was all the easier to believe because I’d so recently come face to face with the principle's appalling opposite.</div></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2016/07/a-tour-of-tolerant-diversity-horrors-of.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-8987950600915494721Mon, 23 May 2016 23:04:00 +00002016-05-23T19:55:52.185-04:00Bill de BlasioBoris Johnsoncycle lanesDavid GreenfielddemocracyMelinda KatzNew York City cyclingQueens BoulevardSadiq KhanA cancelled bike lane, a crowded F Train - and why New York planning has to start muting the noisy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal">A few times recently, while cycling in <st1:place w:st="on">Queens</st1:place>I’ve taken routes that carried me across <st1:street w:st="on">Queens Boulevard</st1:street> – once known as the “Boulevard of Death,” for its dreadful safety record – and seen some of its smart new bike lanes. But I’ve never actually used them, for a simple reason. While <st1:street w:st="on">Queens Boulevard</st1:street>goes to some useful places, the current, 1.3-mile stretch of bike lane doesn’t link up to anywhere I want to go.</div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-H77dMxz2SCg/V0OJJAONBeI/AAAAAAAACLA/TYTAIA_8n9YZXT_LRd6_a13iH2iHnCUoQCLcB/s1600/Queens%2BBoulevard%2Bsign.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="253" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-H77dMxz2SCg/V0OJJAONBeI/AAAAAAAACLA/TYTAIA_8n9YZXT_LRd6_a13iH2iHnCUoQCLcB/s320/Queens%2BBoulevard%2Bsign.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A sign points towards the Queens Boulevard bike lanes -<br />or, as Community Board 4 would have preferred,<br />the bike path to practically nowhere.</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">If <st1:place w:st="on">Queens</st1:place>’ Community Board 4 had had its way, that arrangement would have continued. In a vote on May 10, members of the board – a strange, officially-sponsored but still only advisory and unelected local planning committee – voted to approve safety improvements for their stretch of the boulevard, the 1.2 miles immediately east of the existing bike lanes. But they voted to remove the bike lanes from the project (cyclists’ safety should be an “afterthought”, one member said). The step prompted bafflement and outrage because it threatened not only the stretch of the road in Community Board 4 but the whole effort to turn the Boulevard of Death into a less forbidding space.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Yet the story of CB 4’s bike lanes stands out in <st1:city w:st="on">New York City</st1:city>’s transport planning only because of how the story ends. The decision was so obviously contrary to the public interest – and so procedurally flawed - that Bill de Blasio, the mayor, unusually found the courage to overturn the board’s recommendation the next day. He instead <a href="http://www.streetsblog.org/2016/05/11/de-blasio-advances-queens-boulevard-redesign-despite-cb-4-shenanigans/">ordered</a> the Department of Transportation to continue developing the improvements with the bike lanes intact. Plenty of other changes that would improve the city as a whole get blocked because a noisy handful of people on a community board or&nbsp; other&nbsp; group object loudly enough that the greater good doesn’t prevail. Two other bike lane projects have fallen foul of such objections just this month.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Try_2vrB6I0/V0OJnpAUukI/AAAAAAAACLE/5tqw-6TqSJw3ior0CtPCyuZPYvYoE4EcQCLcB/s1600/Truck%2Bon%2BJay%2BSt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Try_2vrB6I0/V0OJnpAUukI/AAAAAAAACLE/5tqw-6TqSJw3ior0CtPCyuZPYvYoE4EcQCLcB/s320/Truck%2Bon%2BJay%2BSt.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"What do you mean the city's transport is poorly planned?<br />"Oh, I see."</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">The question is whether it’s a bug or a feature of <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>’s democracy – and that of many other places around the world – that relatively small, vocal groups can either bring to life or kill projects in a way that damages the wider society. It’s the kind of argument familiar to anyone who’s spent time in <st1:country-region w:st="on">India</st1:country-region>, where desperately-needed infrastructure projects are <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/10c4a56e-fd00-11db-9971-000b5df10621.html#axzz49WfAk3YN">often held up</a> by scores of pettifogging obstructions. Officials when challenged on this – and the stark contrast with <st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place>’s greater effectiveness at getting things done – tend to hold up their hands in defeat and say, “But we’re a democracy”.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">True democracy, I think, should be more sophisticated than the crude system often practised in <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>, where the noisy enjoy disproportionate influence over the apparent will of the less vocal majority. The current system unsurprisingly suits many of those who have grown up with it, however. After the mayor’s overturning of the CB4 decisions, Melinda Katz, the <st1:place w:st="on">Queens</st1:place>borough president, put herself firmly in the democracy-is-the-right-to-block camp.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">“Any action to install bike lanes along this stretch at this time, regardless of merit, would… understandably be perceived as an imposition by the administration, running directly counter to and overriding the Community Board’s explicitly-stated wishes,” Ms Katz said in a statement.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">The bizarre case of F Train express subway service in <st1:place w:st="on">Brooklyn</st1:place>highlights how illogical the effects of this kind of democracy can be.<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XfQtay3NhZQ/V0OJ4ipvKRI/AAAAAAAACLM/1gLGXkE7Bso-N1vuSqX7yugLbRY54VJmwCLcB/s1600/F%2BTrain%252C%2BSmith-9th%2BSt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XfQtay3NhZQ/V0OJ4ipvKRI/AAAAAAAACLM/1gLGXkE7Bso-N1vuSqX7yugLbRY54VJmwCLcB/s320/F%2BTrain%252C%2BSmith-9th%2BSt.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A F Train leaves Smith-9th St after stopping: David Greenfield<br />dreams of the coming day when it'll zip past, whisking<br />his constituents home faster</td></tr></tbody></table><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state organisation that runs the subway, has been pressured into considering reintroduction of an express F subway service in Brooklyn – skipping all but a handful of stations in the inner parts of the borough – by a campaign by David Greenfield, a member of New York City council representing outer parts of the borough such as Bensonhurst and Borough Park. The idea has generally been regarded as a non-starter for practical reasons. Because capacity in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Manhattan</st1:place></st1:city>is restricted, any introduction of express trains would mean fewer local trains. Since the stations that have only local track platforms – including <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Smith-9<sup>th</sup> St</st1:address></st1:street>, by my apartment - are mostly busier than those with express platforms, an express service would delay more people than it helped and increase overcrowding.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">The MTA has nevertheless caved to David Greenfield’s campaign. On May 17, the subway operator announced its decision to restart service in 2017 alongside publication of a <a href="http://web.mta.info/nyct/service/pdf/F_express.pdf">feasibility study</a> that, to the casual reader, seemed stuffed with evidence that that was a terrible idea. While express service users would on average get a journey 3.4 minutes shorter, the study said, local train riders would be suffer an average 1.3 minute delay standing gazing at the new express service zipping by. Since there are more users of the local train stations and some could suffer serious overcrowding, it is hard to resist the conclusion that the new service is a retrograde step being taken solely for political reasons.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ijjPqeg6kDo/V0OKXrSsYMI/AAAAAAAACLU/MlOu5WmVfVsU9oYNhMDTvG80_aOMa31eQCLcB/s1600/F%2BTrain%2Bsign.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ijjPqeg6kDo/V0OKXrSsYMI/AAAAAAAACLU/MlOu5WmVfVsU9oYNhMDTvG80_aOMa31eQCLcB/s320/F%2BTrain%2Bsign.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A sign apologises that some F Trains<br />are passing stations without stopping -<br />but today's service disruption could be<br />next year's service "enhancement"</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">In both the F Express and <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Queens Boulevard</st1:address></st1:street>cases, small, geographically distinct groups have advocated for their needs to dictate how the whole of a particular bit of road or subway track is used. The Bensonhurst would-be express train riders will produce negative knock-on effects all along the line. Similarly, community board members who express horror about potential bike lanes’ effects on “their” parking spaces affect road users all along the corridor.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">The current approach virtually ensures the city’s infrastructure works less efficiently, less safely and less fairly than it ideally would do. To become better-functioning, more effective democracies, <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>and other big cities need the ability to plan carefully and to push through elements of the plan that will benefit the whole city even if small, vocal groups protest. There is a strong case for introducing a far more comprehensive process of strategic planning for the city to try to cut down on the number of wasteful subway services started and stranded, isolated bike lanes.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">Change is particularly urgent because many of the problems facing the city require solutions to problems that affect nearly everyone a little but that a few noisy interest groups oppose. There can be little doubt, for example, that the congestion-charging system proposed under the Move New York plan would be at least as successful as <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city></st1:place>’s equivalent. But no noisy interest group is as interested in solving the problem as a handful of motorists are in continuing to drive free into <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Manhattan</st1:place></st1:city>.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">The city’s housing crisis drives up nearly everyone’s rent. But the interests of people who don’t want a new apartment tower next to their brownstone help to ensure it goes unaddressed. It’s no coincidence that road safety – which few people regard as a big problem for them personally – has suffered under the current arrangements. Few people recognise how grave a threat dangerous streets pose to them, while a handful of passionate people are determined to defend their access to free parking from safety improvements.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XLcQWkIgPoU/V0OLA750pkI/AAAAAAAACLg/OYDKEwDVavYRHB-t9MZuEe3TeIOmiR-_gCLcB/s1600/Bike%2Bto%2BWork%2BDay%2BCyclists.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XLcQWkIgPoU/V0OLA750pkI/AAAAAAAACLg/OYDKEwDVavYRHB-t9MZuEe3TeIOmiR-_gCLcB/s320/Bike%2Bto%2BWork%2BDay%2BCyclists.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A CB4 member called cyclists "missiles on wheels".<br />Here, some refuel.</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">The lack of a strong planning function reflects deliberate choices, rather than mere happenstance. <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-terrifying-avenue-new-mayor-and-how.html">Robert Moses</a>, the bureaucrat who shaped modern, car-dominated <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>, carefully demolished efforts to introduce systematic planning in the years between the first and second world wars. Robert Caro’s <i>The Power Broker</i> details how that gave Moses free rein for decades to build in the city more or less whatever&nbsp; he chose – and to avoid building things he disliked, like new <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-c-train-my-childhood-and-why-subway.html">subway lines</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">David Greenfield and other loud-mouthed politicians currently operate in that Moses gap, as do community boards. If the city had a comprehensive planning function that measured the city’s needs as a whole, it would probably provide a strong counterbalance to politicians’ efforts to push plans that sacrifice the city’s needs to those of their constituents. If the city had a strong planning function, it would take into account legitimate concerns from people like CB4. But it would surely not stand for the <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/02/a-barging-garbage-truck-slippery.html">present approach to building bike lanes</a>, where it’s a battle to build each short stretch and the differences between community boards manifest themselves in bike lanes that are high quality for 20 blocks or so before disappearing for the next 20.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-O35o9BdgCqM/V0OLYPB98eI/AAAAAAAACLo/4jABnGr9_Do6clRbdvrgHg5fSzFkjQ91ACLcB/s1600/Clinton%2BAvenue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-O35o9BdgCqM/V0OLYPB98eI/AAAAAAAACLo/4jABnGr9_Do6clRbdvrgHg5fSzFkjQ91ACLcB/s320/Clinton%2BAvenue.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A picture of Clinton Avenue makes it clear just how<br />damaging it could have been to make it one-way<br />and install a two-way bike lane.</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">The effects of the failure to act are everywhere. On Saturday, I hauled my son on his trailer bike from our home to the Museum of the Moving Image in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Astoria</st1:place></st1:city>. Our route to the <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Flushing Avenue</st1:address></st1:street> bike lanes was less safe than if the city had already built the proposed two-way bike lane on <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Clinton Avenue</st1:address></st1:street> in Wallabout that was scrapped last week because of residents’ objections. We saw signs to the <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Queens Boulevard</st1:address></st1:street>bike lanes. On Sunday, a fellow parishioner at my church talked in really panicky terms about the effects of rent increases. Because I’m going on a trip this week, I used the F Train to get to work this morning, boarding at <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Carroll St</st1:address></st1:street>, one of the stations whose users will suffer if the poorly conceived express plan is carried out.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">Yet the system’s attractions for politicians and powerful interest groups are obvious. Even in <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city> – a city that’s generally, I think, better governed than <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state> – <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2012/05/how-should-cyclists-pedal-electoral.html">Boris Johnson</a> on becoming mayor removed the west <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city>extension of the congestion charging zone. There are persistent rumours that Sadiq Khan, who’s just been elected to replace him, will harm well-thought-out plans to develop a network of protected bike lanes by scrapping some future parts of the programme.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jvBCX_MHuS8/V0OLzHouBaI/AAAAAAAACLw/2tPZA4U171AfGkxiLcWNw4-PMJWQGXKwQCLcB/s1600/Crowded%2BF%2BTrain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jvBCX_MHuS8/V0OLzHouBaI/AAAAAAAACLw/2tPZA4U171AfGkxiLcWNw4-PMJWQGXKwQCLcB/s320/Crowded%2BF%2BTrain.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Passengers board an already-crowded F Train at Carroll St:<br />let's&nbsp;hope the right lessons are learnt when this&nbsp;gets<br />far worse next year.</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">In <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>, the current arrangements sometimes suit even politicians who disapprove of the system’s outcomes. Mayor de Blasio was able to win far easier, more immediate praise from safe streets activists for overturning the <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Queens Boulevard</st1:address></st1:street> decision than if he’d had to work to make sure there was a more rational system in place at the start. Andrew Cuomo, <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>’s governor, may one day heroically intervene to cancel the F Express plans - with even more fanfare than he deployed in the first place to announce them.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">There remains, nevertheless, the possibility that, as the poor decisions mount up, the public will start to demand serious reform. While I hope that there are no deaths or injuries on <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Clinton Avenue</st1:address></st1:street>, if any occur advocates should point out noisy special interests’ responsibility for them. The people with whom I shared the F Train this morning may also prove a powerful constituency in future. The train at <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Carroll St</st1:address></st1:street> was packed this morning, as it is nearly every morning. It was bizarre to reflect that the MTA was contemplating measures that would worsen the position still further. If the express plans proceed, I hope the jammed-in commuters will remember to blame not only David Greenfield but the rotten system that allows him to succeed.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2016/05/a-cancelled-bike-lane-crowded-f-train.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-2100551907250136898Tue, 10 May 2016 02:21:00 +00002016-05-10T12:44:27.455-04:00cycling in New YorkGordon Grahamhelmetslife expectancyLucy Kellawayrational liferewardsrisksurban cyclingA sobering email, writing about cycling - and why my rational choice brings me joy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal">It wasn’t the most depressing email I’ve ever received. But it was one of the more disheartening related to this blog. A couple of weeks ago, an old, London-based contact emailed to let me know he was moving to <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>. But, while I eagerly agreed to his suggestion we meet up, his second paragraph gave me pause for some gloomy thought.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“I shall not be cycling,” my contact wrote. “I have read enough of your blogs not to tempt fate.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--_1j7q-om1A/VzFD_bWwd0I/AAAAAAAACIM/QTUr4TPnink6cHhWN41s6zJnf2qMpAujQCLcB/s1600/Manhattan%2BBridge%2BBike%2BJam.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--_1j7q-om1A/VzFD_bWwd0I/AAAAAAAACIM/QTUr4TPnink6cHhWN41s6zJnf2qMpAujQCLcB/s320/Manhattan%2BBridge%2BBike%2BJam.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cyclists literally queue up at the Manhattan Bridge<br />to tempt fate</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">The line made me realise my fundamental failure to strike a balance in how I’ve written about cycling. While I would like <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state> conditions for riding to be far better, I haven’t, I recognise, given nearly enough space to why, amid all my complaining, I continue to ride a bicycle.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">My dismay has grown all the greater subsequently as I’ve received repeated reminders that large numbers of people either think it wholly irrational to ride a bicycle in a city or misunderstand the rationale for doing so. Two days after I received the email, Lucy Kellaway, my colleague at the Financial Times, published a <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/da78957c-07ec-11e6-a623-b84d06a39ec2.html#axzz48GQqsWwE">column</a> saying she longed to return to cycling after a recent crash while cycle commuting. But she said many readers had assured her the crash should have served as a warning to her to give up. The day before Lucy’s piece, the New York Times published an article of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/25/nyregion/a-nervous-bikers-guide-to-cycling-in-new-york-city.html?_r=0">advice for would-be urban cyclists</a>. The Times’ piece dwelt at length on the need to wear a helmet and follow all the road rules but suggested one simply had to trust drivers not to pass one too closely. Most despicably, AMNewYork, a New York news site, on Monday published a piece of unpleasant clickbait listing the <a href="http://www.amny.com/transit/worst-things-about-bicyclists-in-new-york-city-1.11778436">"Worst Things about Bicyclists in New York City"</a>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Such criticism of the choice to cycle often seems to me to miss a core point about cycling as an activity. Cyclists, to read many people’s writing about the subject, are helpless subjects of the dangers of the roads, who can do no more to mitigate the risks than wear a plastic helmet. This is essentially the way a cyclist must look to an onlooker driving a motor vehicle.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Yet the arguments in favour of cycling all focus on its nature as an active form of transport. There are significant health benefits to be derived from cycling as a physical activity. It’s also possible to act in ways that, to a limited extent, mitigate the dangers. I’m convinced that, when these points are thrown into the balance, the cost/benefit ratio swings overwhelmingly in favour of cycling. I regret having given a different impression.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tZ4oLvNFFxI/VzFEljkgfSI/AAAAAAAACIU/suehbNLEeYAXdFsZqRuGLlFpGnwcp2r9QCLcB/s1600/Broadway%2BBike%2BLane%2BChaos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tZ4oLvNFFxI/VzFEljkgfSI/AAAAAAAACIU/suehbNLEeYAXdFsZqRuGLlFpGnwcp2r9QCLcB/s320/Broadway%2BBike%2BLane%2BChaos.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Broadway bike lane: not a clear signal of cycling's<br />rationality</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">It’s perhaps worth asking, however, why it even matters to me that my choice is rational. It’s irrational, after all, to eat and drink as much as I do. It’s almost certainly not sensible to work as hard as I do at a job that’s far less significant than it feels when I’m wrapped up in it. I could simply say – as Lucy’s piece concluded – that a cold-headed assessment of risk doesn’t capture why I cycle. I could say that I ride my bike because of the joy of feeling <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/03/an-unexpected-rhythm-stressful-ride-to.html">in step with the city</a>, of the extraordinary things one<a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-soho-epiphany-south-london-mugging.html"> sees late at night</a>, or because I feel when I'm cycling as if I <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/04/a-midtown-mechanical-hudson-river.html">have a superpower</a>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m not quite prepared to do that, however. It would feel, partly, like a betrayal if, having criticised the irrationality of so many other people’s thinking about transport, I decided it was a matter of personal taste. I’d also risk sounding like the archetypal annoying hipster explaining how he likes a band you “probably won’t have heard of” – “I like cycling in <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state> – but it’s probably a bit too hardcore for you”.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I want, as I wrote four years ago, to live what Gordon Graham, one of my moral philosophy lecturers at university, called <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2012/03/it-may-be-fun-but-is-cycling-part-of.html">“the rational life”</a>. Someone living a rational life seeks to use reason to decide how to behave. If I didn't think the way I got about was rational, I'd find another way to travel.<br /><br />Yet there is no doubt that there is at least a superficial case that I'm taking on an unnecessary risk when I cycle. I have, over the course of more than two decades' urban cycling, been twice knocked off by motor vehicles and once by another cyclist. It was only good fortune that none of these crashes involved a serious, long-term injury. There is a small - but not entirely negligible - risk that some day I too will end up, through no fault of my own, crushed under the wheels of a badly-driven truck or sent flying into the air through a taxi driver's inattention.<br /><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kYPB3GEcnTI/VzFFBO5Y8yI/AAAAAAAACIY/ucVsMDw9BL0NBmFzS76PBdfiT9Ro-LuHgCLcB/s1600/Crashed%2Bcar%252C%2BW54th%2BSt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kYPB3GEcnTI/VzFFBO5Y8yI/AAAAAAAACIY/ucVsMDw9BL0NBmFzS76PBdfiT9Ro-LuHgCLcB/s320/Crashed%2Bcar%252C%2BW54th%2BSt.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Make a wise choice, folks: drive a car instead. Oh.</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal">But that fails to capture anything like the whole, complex picture of the risks I'm managing. Heart disease, cancer, stroke and my tendency to put on weight all pose far more serious risks to my life expectancy than the small risk of a fatal crash. Figures years ago from Cycling <st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region> suggested that someone who cycled regularly into middle age – that’s I now, folks – increased his or her life expectancy by an average 24 months. The reduction from crashes was, on average, two months. While the figures for deaths per mile in the US are hard to find, the risk per mile of cycling looks to be just short of twice as high, leaving the benefit: cost ratio still a healthy 7:1.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I am not, either, a helpless victim of those averages. It is certainly true that the vast bulk of crashes between drivers and cyclists are <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2013/12/a-jersey-city-leaflet-east-new-york.html">mainly the driver’s fault</a>. But I have, I think, learnt over the years a <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-frightened-old-man-angry-taxi-driver.html">“well-managed fear”</a>. I let my nervousness about the vehicles around me prompt me towards holding the road when drivers try to bully me out of the way, making clear, understandable movements, rather than sudden, darting ones. I try to communicate clearly with drivers. Such behaviour can guard against the negligence of people who have far less at stake than I. A good <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2013/05/routes-and-why-i-prefer-developing-my.html">knowledge of safe routes</a> and the skills to take up the necessary road space to discourage dangerous passing are far more useful than most of the “safety tips” that the New York Times’ piece gave.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nEoqInMYtUI/VzFFXd7phwI/AAAAAAAACIg/H_rxcqJm4dEBSQCcDP_KK920_QvqE5VdQCLcB/s1600/Driving%2BCulture%2B5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nEoqInMYtUI/VzFFXd7phwI/AAAAAAAACIg/H_rxcqJm4dEBSQCcDP_KK920_QvqE5VdQCLcB/s320/Driving%2BCulture%2B5.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Should New York's cycling facilities make it clearer<br />cycling's a good idea? Guess what I think, based on this picture.</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">It’s because cycling is a rational choice, meanwhile, that it’s folly for cities to seek to cater to cyclists merely as part of a policy of offering a choice of travel modes. Given that cycling makes personal sense for vast numbers of people, makes excellent use of road space and reduces pollution, it should be incumbent on cities actively to promote cycling. City departments of transportation should ask themselves if few people choose to cycle why their road designs are instead promoting less rational options. The risks of cycling should undoubtedly be less than they are. But better-designed roads would not only reduce those risks but make it far clearer how rational a choice it is to cycle.<br /><br />Better facilities would make it far easier for citizens to appreciate the true balance of risks they face. All forms of transport entail some form of risk. I was <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-1980-crash-rushed-hearing-and-why.html">knocked down as a child</a> while crossing a street. I <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-detroit-trip-tribeca-greeting-and-why.html">crashed my dad's car off the road</a> during my first driving lesson. I've been caught underground in a subway train<a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-c-train-my-childhood-and-why-subway.html"> during a track fire</a>. Riding a bicycle represents, even under current sub-optimal conditions, a good trade-off between risks and rewards.<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PF4LUBv0GZo/VzICXvMH1WI/AAAAAAAACI8/sz6TsaZceWg9PkbFCqnRg8Tr0kvczTcLgCLcB/s1600/USS%2BIntrepid.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PF4LUBv0GZo/VzICXvMH1WI/AAAAAAAACI8/sz6TsaZceWg9PkbFCqnRg8Tr0kvczTcLgCLcB/s320/USS%2BIntrepid.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The USS Intrepid: a sight I'd have missed in the subway.</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Yet I can’t deny that I’m happy to find cycling rational because it’s also a joy. I was acutely aware of that on Friday when I finally met up with my old contact. Leaving the office, I pedalled up <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Hudson</st1:place></st1:city> St then out onto the Hudson River Greenway towards midtown. It was a journey my colleagues assumed I wouldn’t do by bike because of the looming threat of rain. My contact assumed I wouldn’t have enjoyed because I’d be battling through traffic. It nevertheless lifted my spirits in a way that a subway trip could never have done and got me there promptly and cheaply in a way a taxi ride could not have. As I zipped along by the water under leaden skies, looking up at the Empire State Building, marvelling at the USS Intrepid and hearing the splash of the water, I reflected on the straightforward pleasure the ride was bringing me. There are few satisfactions greater, I realised, than indulging in an activity that's both rational and brings one immense joy.</div></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2016/05/a-sobering-email-writing-about-cycling.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-4721948357575536568Wed, 20 Apr 2016 22:11:00 +00002016-04-21T06:58:22.954-04:00angerBrooklyncycle superhighwayscycling in New York CityJames GreggLauren DavisPark Slopestreet spacevictim-blamingAn angry driver on 8th St, two tragedies - and why New York cyclists aren't meant to be really there<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal">It wasn’t a surprise but it was a disappointment. As I rode my bike on Saturday, fast, down <st1:street w:st="on">8<sup>th</sup> Street</st1:street> in Park Slope, a driver, coming up from behind me, thought she <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2016/02/christmas-eve-harassment-sociopath-in.html">knew better than I</a> where in the street I should be riding. She started – as happens very frequently when one rides down these streets, correctly, in the middle of the road - trying to honk me out of her way.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I’d ridden down <st1:street w:st="on">8<sup>th</sup> St</st1:street> because neighbouring, busier <st1:street w:st="on">9<sup>th</sup> St</st1:street>’s bike lane – sandwiched in the dangerous door zone for parked cars – is invariably clogged with double-parked cars. It’s far more dangerous and stressful than its narrower, one-way neighbours.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vs48RNYHD-Q/Vxf254UqfiI/AAAAAAAACEs/11R8ET6TZ6w5O2xFQ5e60x8hOuZvqmgkwCLcB/s1600/8th%2BSt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vs48RNYHD-Q/Vxf254UqfiI/AAAAAAAACEs/11R8ET6TZ6w5O2xFQ5e60x8hOuZvqmgkwCLcB/s320/8th%2BSt.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">8th St: not New York's narrowest street - but would you want a<br />car passing you at 30mph as you barreled down here?</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">But, when she caught up with me at the next intersection, the woman explained why she thought she had the right to breeze past as if I weren’t there.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“You shouldn’t be in the middle of the road,” the woman told me.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“I was stopping you from overtaking me until I could let you past safely,” I said.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“You don’t belong in the middle of the road,” she said.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“Yes I do,” I answered.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Then, inevitably, as I rode off, a bystander shouted after me.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“Hey, you need to be on a street with a bike lane! You should be on <st1:street w:st="on">Ninth Street</st1:street>!”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The exchange illustrated, in part, people’s automatic, infuriating assumption that they are clever and sophisticated and cyclists are uninformed simpletons <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2012/04/am-i-real-to-you-noam-chomsky-and-real.html">making stupid decisions</a> for unfathomable reasons.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Y4VWWrKuiag/Vxf3L4SgMdI/AAAAAAAACEw/6ZefihY2RtAeRQlAw1KLsiAcjiZ91HTsgCLcB/s1600/9th%2BSt%2Bbike%2Blane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Y4VWWrKuiag/Vxf3L4SgMdI/AAAAAAAACEw/6ZefihY2RtAeRQlAw1KLsiAcjiZ91HTsgCLcB/s320/9th%2BSt%2Bbike%2Blane.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A cyclist dodges round a car parked in the 9th St bike lane:<br />this is the idyll one bystander recommended I use<br />instead of 8th St.</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">But it also shed light on a problem facing cyclists in many cities making half-hearted attempts at accommodating cyclists. I was struck, as I rode on, by how cycling had been shoe-horned into <st1:city w:st="on">New York City</st1:city> in a way that’s meant to avoid inconveniencing anyone else. <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/07/a-driving-test-mistaken-questions-and.html">No-one had ever told</a> this woman that, yes, she might occasionally have to wait a few seconds to get past a cyclist. The builders (more accurately, painters) of the 9<sup>th</sup> St bike lane had sought to make it barely impinge on drivers.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The designs betray a profound confusion in public policy. There’s a vague instinct that cyclists can’t be entirely denied better facilities. But that goes hand in hand with cowardice about the idea that promoting cycling is a public good. There’s no sense that sacrifices to encourage cycling might be worth everybody’s while. The unspoken sense is that cyclists should take up <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/04/a-stunning-view-midtown-ride-and-why.html">no space</a>, have <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-speeding-cyclist-momentum-and-how.html">no momentum</a> and cause no-one else to modify any part of their behaviour. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The inevitable result is that cyclists are forced into making the compromises that others get to avoid. As I rode down <st1:street w:st="on">8<sup>th</sup> St</st1:street>, I faced a choice between being harassed for riding down the middle of the street or taking the risk of being hit by an inattentive driver’s opening door and knocked into the path of a driver passing me at 30mph. Had I chosen instead to ride down <st1:street w:st="on">9<sup>th</sup> St</st1:street>, I’d have faced a combination of both dangers. I’d have had to ride in the parked cars’ door zone then pull out round the parked vehicles, being tailgated by drivers who thought I should somehow not be out of the bike lane.</div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kEup8DbVlKw/Vxf4WMkhAiI/AAAAAAAACFA/lihI8j-aPzc431zwRUc3f_x3iQNuM40RgCLcB/s1600/Jay%2BSt%2Bbike%2Blane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kEup8DbVlKw/Vxf4WMkhAiI/AAAAAAAACFA/lihI8j-aPzc431zwRUc3f_x3iQNuM40RgCLcB/s320/Jay%2BSt%2Bbike%2Blane.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Jay St "bike lane" in downtown Brooklyn:<br />evidence on its own of why New York's bike commuting rate<br />is so low.</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It’s no surprise under these circumstances that cycling in <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state> remains a fringe activity, confined to a relative handful of us who think the personal benefits of getting about by bike <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2012/03/it-may-be-fun-but-is-cycling-part-of.html">outweigh the costs</a>. It’s a situation mirrored in the many cities across North America and some parts of <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The current circumstances practically guarantee that the benefits the planners were seeking from cycling – cleaner air, safer streets, better use of road space – won’t materialise. The dominant surviving forms of cycling – fast riding by the young and fit, coupled with widespread rule-breaking by riders fleeing dangerous drivers – are used as evidence that promoting cycling is a Bad Thing. It’s time for such cities either to get serious about cycling provision or to stop the current dangerous and stressful pretence.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Not, I’m sure, that any of this&nbsp; would make sense from the perspective of the Angry BMW Driver of <st1:street w:st="on">8<sup>th</sup> St.</st1:street> It must, I accept, seem odd when driving a large vehicle down a street to see a cyclist, a single person on a&nbsp; narrow vehicle, taking up the centre of the lane. It must, in certain circumstances, feel like a theft of the road space.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-X4QVbLXauI8/Vxf5NSi2l2I/AAAAAAAACFM/i8fvZYM3pzkJK6AVcOsFg4pHzgM6HnXrgCLcB/s1600/bike%2Bcompure.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-X4QVbLXauI8/Vxf5NSi2l2I/AAAAAAAACFM/i8fvZYM3pzkJK6AVcOsFg4pHzgM6HnXrgCLcB/s320/bike%2Bcompure.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My bike computer after one run-in with<br />an angry driver being held up:<br />unacceptably slow in a city with<br />a 25mph speed limit.</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">I don’t ride down the middle of the road to make some abstruse point, however. As I use these streets, my bike computer often tells me I’m going well over 20mph. As a large man on a heavy bike with luggage, I have significant momentum. If a driver opened a door into my path or pulled out of a parking space without looking, I would be sent flying over my handlebars. These aren’t marginal, theoretical risks. Only a few weeks ago on <st1:street w:st="on">8<sup>th</sup> St</st1:street>, I had to swerve at high speed after a driver pulled out, fast, from a parking space into my path. Had I been riding where the Angry Woman thought I should, I could easily have been killed.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Nor was I in any real sense inconveniencing the woman. Like other narrow Park Slope streets, <st1:street w:st="on">8<sup>th</sup> Street</st1:street> is regularly clogged by double-parkers. The next block downhill features two speed bumps, which I can take without slowing down and drivers can’t.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The woman’s inability to pass me was clearly, however, an affront to her sense of her rights. Her lack of human sympathy for me as a fellow road-user seemed to have bled over into a wider resentment at my having any physical presence at all.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It’s a feeling I encounter surprisingly frequently, from both drivers and pedestrians. I’ve <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-wary-pedestrian-getting-metaphysical.html">recounted before</a> a run-in with a pedestrian who insisted on obstructing the Grand St bike lane in <st1:place w:st="on">Manhattan</st1:place>. The Saturday before my dispute with the angry woman on <st1:street w:st="on">8<sup>th</sup> Street</st1:street>, I was yelled at by a tourist who insisted that, because he wanted to walk on the <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-pain-to-use-but-joy-to-be-on-joys-of.html"><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Brooklyn</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Bridge</st1:placetype></st1:place>’s</a>bike lane, I too should walk, not ride, over the bridge. I’ve come to understand taxi drivers’ tendency to pull out of parking places into my path as more a mark of their sense that cyclists can and should yield to them at will, more than a mere symptom of inattention.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xUOOomgfcqA/Vxf5ziz_-eI/AAAAAAAACFU/VITDnmrG-3QkSKV304SxVJijW3fquEHhQCLcB/s1600/Brooklyn%2BBridge%2Bwinter%2Bmorning.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xUOOomgfcqA/Vxf5ziz_-eI/AAAAAAAACFU/VITDnmrG-3QkSKV304SxVJijW3fquEHhQCLcB/s320/Brooklyn%2BBridge%2Bwinter%2Bmorning.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Brooklyn Bridge, complete with the bike lane<br />one recent critic told me no cyclist should expect to use.</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">The misunderstanding extends to those meant to enforce <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>’s traffic rules. There has been understandable outrage after it emerged that a right-turning police officer <a href="http://gothamist.com/2016/04/14/nypd_cyclist_cops_bike_lane.php">knocked a cyclist off his bike</a> on <st1:street w:st="on">9<sup>th</sup> St</st1:street>in Gowanus, very near my apartment, then had a fellow-officer write that his turn had been perfectly legal. My sense is that the incident might partly reflect police officers’ genuine conviction that it’s a cyclist’s job to avoid traffic turning across his or her path, not a driver’s job to yield.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I used to encounter <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2012/09/farewell-to-london-where-cyclings.html">similar attitudes</a> when I cycled in <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city> – and I can’t imagine they’ll have disappeared entirely when I return there later this year.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>has at least started groping towards an answer to the kinds of incidents I keep encountering. After the disaster of the<a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2012/03/in-which-our-hero-picks-up-cycling.html"> initial, blue-painted Cycle Superhighways</a>, Transport for <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>has finally been shamed into providing some decent, segregated cycle paths on some of its busiest streets. Even when I lived there, London was already far better than New York at providing calming on side streets like 8<sup>th</sup>St to avoid incidents like the one I suffered on Saturday. There’s tragically no sign at all that anyone in <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state> feels under pressure to provide anything like that on this side of the <st1:place w:st="on">Atlantic</st1:place>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Yet <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>’s continuing state of cycling limbo isn’t a merely theoretical problem. Cyclists truly can’t screech instantly to a halt of float harmlessly away from vehicles that menace them. The day before my row with the Angry Driver, a driver a couple of miles away had <a href="http://www.streetsblog.org/2016/04/15/driver-kills-cyclist-on-classon-avenue-in-clinton-hill/">killed a cyclist</a> riding to work in Clinton Hill. This morning, a huge truck, driving on a street where it wasn’t permitted, <a href="http://www.streetsblog.org/2016/04/20/truck-driver-kills-cyclist-in-park-slope/">killed a man on his bike</a> in Park Slope only 15 blocks or so from where I had my row.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-D0puQGZaako/Vxf6im1wgSI/AAAAAAAACFk/PawHMaTlzEsD59a-msjUzhoVIFkQhgTHQCLcB/s1600/Temporary%2Bbike%2Blane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-D0puQGZaako/Vxf6im1wgSI/AAAAAAAACFk/PawHMaTlzEsD59a-msjUzhoVIFkQhgTHQCLcB/s320/Temporary%2Bbike%2Blane.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pedestrians walk down a temporary bike lane on 8th Avenue -<br />in a city that tells you cyclists don't really matter,<br />why wouldn't you?</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal">The police’s instinct in both cases was immediately to <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-twitter-row-gospel-passage-and-why.html">blame the cyclists</a>, essentially, for being where they were. They claimed – improbably, given what is known about her – that Lauren Davis, the victim in Clinton Hill, had been riding against traffic. They have focused, still more improbably, in the Park Slope crash on the theory that James Gregg, the victim, was hanging onto the truck that killed him to hitch a ride. I have never seen a cyclist in <st1:city w:st="on">New York City</st1:city>do such a thing.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The instinct to exonerate the truck driver is all the more extraordinary given that it is clear he was breaking the law just by driving down that street. Both victims seem to me to have died from the grubby compromises forced on cyclists by cowardly road designers and politicians.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I am fortunate indeed that I have so far derived only physical benefits and no serious harm from my <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state> cycling. Yet, just hours after the Park Slope tragedy, I encountered the kind of contemptuous attitude that makes such tragedies&nbsp; all too common. Riding through <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">Fort</st1:placetype> <st1:placename w:st="on">Greene</st1:placename></st1:place> and needing to turn left, I looked over my shoulder to see the driver in the next lane absorbed in his phone, rather than his driving. Fearful that he wouldn’t spot me as I pulled across, I rode for a second or two staring at him while signalling.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">That turned out to be an indignity too far. He sped up for a second or two, to block my turn. Then, when I’d successfully pulled left and turned out of his way, he yelled abuse. He was furious that I’d made him momentarily take his mind off his text.</div></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2016/04/an-angry-driver-on-8th-st-two-tragedies.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-2469488915170019548Tue, 15 Mar 2016 03:54:00 +00002016-03-21T21:28:01.285-04:00All Saints' Episcopal ChurchblizzardBrooklynNew York CityNicholas SotoracismRed Hook Housesroad safety and racespeed camerasTom DeVitoTransportation AlternativesA blizzard-blanketed morning, a Red Hook tragedy - and why road safety is part of tackling racism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal">On January 24, the day after <st1:city w:st="on">New York City</st1:city> disappeared under a near-record blanket of snow, I managed to make the mile-long journey to morning worship at <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/07/an-old-fashioned-prejudice-wasted-bronx.html">my church</a>, All Saints’ Episcopal in Park Slope. But, when I looked round the markedly sparser-than-normal congregation, I recognised something unusual. While around half the faces looking back at me would normally be black or brown, that morning nearly everyone was white.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-doPWndw0lKQ/Vud-dk88aYI/AAAAAAAAB_A/zuXYoHw9UKAwXEk6qXCk9tnwTdbT8YWSQ/s1600/Park%2BSlope%2Bafter%2Bthe%2Bblizzard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-doPWndw0lKQ/Vud-dk88aYI/AAAAAAAAB_A/zuXYoHw9UKAwXEk6qXCk9tnwTdbT8YWSQ/s320/Park%2BSlope%2Bafter%2Bthe%2Bblizzard.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Park Slope the day after the blizzard: the streets weren't<br />the only thing that got whiter.</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">The change reflected the city’s demographics. The black – particularly African-Caribbean – families that once lived in Park Slope have been steadily shifted into <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/04/a-stunning-view-midtown-ride-and-why.html">outer bits</a> of Brooklyn and <st1:place w:st="on">Queens</st1:place>, with poor public transit. They were marooned at home. Far more of the white, mostly better-off members of the congregation were able to get to worship on foot or on the functioning bits of <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-c-train-my-childhood-and-why-subway.html">the subway</a>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The sudden shift was a particular regret for me that Sunday because I was due after the service to give a talk, together with Transportation Alternatives’ Tom DeVito, on the moral imperatives for making the city’s streets safer. In preparing for the talk, I’d unearthed a trove of material about the disproportionate dangers facing black people and other minorities on streets across the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region>. Some of the people with the most urgent stake in what I had to say wouldn’t get to hear it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Yet much of the commentary I’ve seen on the effects of racism on black people’s transport choices focuses on the far narrower issue of black people’s disproportionate chances of being stopped by the police while driving. It’s an important issue – and one of the many reasons why I’m keen for the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region>to start using more <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-precinct-house-string-of-deaths-and.html">colourblind traffic cameras</a> for roads policing. However, the focus on that issue – and the <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/12/rage-in-south-london-tragedy-in-fort.html">squeamishness it sometimes induces</a> about tightening up enforcement of road rules – often obscures the pervasive effects of racism on how black people get about, and how safely.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Black people often live in areas with more than their fair share of traffic deaths - but they are disproportionately unlikely to own their own vehicle. They suffer more than other groups from the bad consequences of the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region>’s auto culture while gaining fewer than others of its benefits. Making cities’ roads safer – and, in particular, making the streets of black people’s neighbourhoods safer – is far more than an environmentally-friendly nice-to-have. It’s an integral part of overcoming centuries of racism in the <st1:country-region w:st="on">United States</st1:country-region>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-twy1zcyMSJ0/Vud_VuXtsfI/AAAAAAAAB_I/qJ55qRAaS9ojRGNUNR6f0_WyCkjZ4xR5A/s1600/Hicks%2Band%2BLorainne%2BSt%2Bcorner%252C%2BRed%2BHook.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-twy1zcyMSJ0/Vud_VuXtsfI/AAAAAAAAB_I/qJ55qRAaS9ojRGNUNR6f0_WyCkjZ4xR5A/s320/Hicks%2Band%2BLorainne%2BSt%2Bcorner%252C%2BRed%2BHook.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hicks and Lorraine Streets in Red Hook: near my house<br />in distance, but a world away in experience.</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">It’s not hard, after all, to discover how racism leads to road deaths. On the morning of June 2, 2014, only a short distance from where I live my privileged white existence, Nicholas Soto, a 14-year-old black boy, crossed the street from the Red Hook Houses, a public housing project, to get to his school bus. As he crossed – at an intersection that if the law were properly applied would count as an unmarked crosswalk – the white driver of a BMW that seems to have been comfortably exceeding the speed limit – <a href="http://www.streetsblog.org/2014/06/03/will-da-ken-thompson-investigate-killing-of-14-year-old-nicholas-soto/">sent him flying up into the air</a>, killing him.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Red Hook Houses are among the many drab housing projects built around <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>as part of the “slum clearance” programme by <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2013/11/a-futurist-urban-bike-ride-and-why-were.html">Robert Moses</a>, for many decades the city’s most powerful man. Moses’s decision to place the housing in often out-of-the way places – the Red Hook Houses are deeply inconvenient for the subway, particularly because of the barrier formed by Moses’s <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-terrifying-avenue-new-mayor-and-how.html">Brooklyn-QueensExpressway</a> – puts residents at a permanent disadvantage.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The projects were developed, meanwhile, in ways that Jane Jacobs, the pioneering urbanist, convincingly argues serve to make the spaces hostile to residents’ needs. The streets outside such projects lack the bustle they would have had if the houses had opened directly onto them. Drivers consequently tend to treat the roads – including the one where Nicholas was killed – as urban freeways, to be navigated far too fast.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lz_Gh-lw8bs/VueAs-SMyMI/AAAAAAAAB_U/uJbqwK0UOUM7h8mWj6UmU5uBMSYuKc8Ug/s1600/Safety%2BAmsterdam%2BAve%2Bslow%2Bzone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lz_Gh-lw8bs/VueAs-SMyMI/AAAAAAAAB_U/uJbqwK0UOUM7h8mWj6UmU5uBMSYuKc8Ug/s1600/Safety%2BAmsterdam%2BAve%2Bslow%2Bzone.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The road past the General Grant Houses,<br />in northern Manhattan, in case you<br />wondered why more people died on the streets<br />in such areas.</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Yet the residents of such projects – who are overwhelmingly black or from other minority communities – have little choice but to get about such streets under their own power or by public transport. In 2006, Alan Berube of the Brookings Institution and Elizabeth Deakin and Steven Raphael of the University of California Berkeley published <a href="http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~raphael/BerubeDeakenRaphael.pdf">research</a> showing that 19 per cent of black households in the US had no access to a car, compared with 7.8 per cent of households as a whole. Even among non-poor black households, 9.9 per cent had no access to a car, compared with 4 per cent for the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region> as a whole. The figures for <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state> – which has much the lowest rate of vehicle ownership in the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region> – must be far higher.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The disparity probably reflects the same reluctance to extend credit to black people that left so many exposed in the first place to Moses’ mass demolitions of rental properties. The results, meanwhile, are unambiguous. Children and adults from well-off families do, tragically, die in well-off areas such as Park Slope or the Upper West Side. But people like Nicholas Soto are over-represented in the death toll.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nyc_ped_safety_study_action_plan.pdf">Research in 2010</a> by the New York Department of Transportation found that people from minority communities were more likely to be hit while walking or cycling. The effect reflected street designs in areas such as the Red Hook Houses. There were higher crash rates in areas with high proportions of black people. But black people and other minorities were no more likely than other people to suffer crashes in areas away from their homes.</div><div style="text-align: right;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">All of this, of course, should prompt some self-reflection. For people like me, it’s a reminder that we should not only think about our own demands for better bike lanes and pedestrian crossings in comfortable, inner parts of our urban areas - but also about the needs of poorer, farther-flung parts of the city. If the street outside the Red Hook Houses had been narrowed by a well-designed bike lane, the BMW driver would almost certainly not have felt able to drive as fast as he did. Nicholas might still be alive.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JbB3Jbdq7Wk/Vuf3Ona9UdI/AAAAAAAAB_8/S3VrXiUifkko78sM54-ZC59Pg9toiPbUA/s1600/8th%2BStreet%252C%2BPark%2BSlope.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JbB3Jbdq7Wk/Vuf3Ona9UdI/AAAAAAAAB_8/S3VrXiUifkko78sM54-ZC59Pg9toiPbUA/s320/8th%2BStreet%252C%2BPark%2BSlope.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">8th Street in Park Slope: a safer place, statistically speaking,<br />&nbsp;for everyone to get about.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Meanwhile, for people who insist that lower speed limits, loss of parking spaces and restrictions on car use represent the smothering of a vital form of freedom, it’s worth asking whose freedom is more important. Why are the critics of change so ready to perpetuate motor cars’ dominance of urban spaces when it so clearly entrenches the privileges of richer, whiter people at poorer, browner people’s expense?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But the issue matters to me on a personal level too. When I arrived at church for worship eight days after the blizzard, I was reminded what had been missing the previous Sunday. I was greeted again in warm accents from all around the <st1:place w:st="on">Caribbean</st1:place>. There was a sense, which had been dulled the previous week, that I was a member of a community alongside this diverse group of people, even though I know most of them only in passing.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Many of the attitudes that make deaths such as Nicholas’s so common reflect an <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2013/03/crashes-and-communities-deadly.html">aversion</a> to treating <st1:city w:st="on">New York City</st1:city>– or the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region>as a whole – as a true, integrated society. Some of the failures are to do with failures of road safety policy. <st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place>’s police department often lapses into thinking victims cause most crashes. They blamed Nicholas’s death, for example, on his wearing a hoodie, which they claimed obscured his view. The evidence and common sense show <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-twitter-row-gospel-passage-and-why.html">drivers cause most such crashes</a>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6wWFDk0cwMQ/VueCAkTMlBI/AAAAAAAAB_g/LN0u_CAYtSECowCYCPtqbE2Y-RgffSg0A/s1600/All%2BSaints%2527%2BChurch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6wWFDk0cwMQ/VueCAkTMlBI/AAAAAAAAB_g/LN0u_CAYtSECowCYCPtqbE2Y-RgffSg0A/s320/All%2BSaints%2527%2BChurch.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">All Saints' Church: the place that gives me<br />a wider sense of community</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">But it’s also common to hear people suggest that residents of places like the Red Hook Houses could get ahead just as well as anyone if they put their minds to it. It’s an obvious obscenity to believe that people who’ve been systematically prevented over centuries from accumulating capital or getting an education are anywhere close to starting&nbsp; from the same place as privileged people such as I.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I myself largely ignore the reality of living in a complex, mixed community. Although I lived close to Nicholas Soto, it’s unlikely I’d have ever met him had he&nbsp; lived. I find myself jumping to lazy assumptions about drivers or people I see on the street, based on ingrained prejudices based on their appearance.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But the Sunday morning after the blizzard and the Sunday following were a reminder that I don’t live entirely in privileged isolation. I smile at, chat with and take communion alongside people whom current policy leaves unjustly exposed to unjustifiable extra risk of traffic death. It’s just as much – if not more - my moral obligation to seek better road conditions for them as it is to seek them for myself.</div></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2016/03/a-blizzard-blanketed-morning-red-hook.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-3402494834354295563Sun, 14 Feb 2016 23:53:00 +00002016-03-06T18:32:40.875-05:00Amsterdam AvenueBill de BlasioBrooklyn BridgecorruptionJanette Sadik-KhanJohn RoeblingMichael BloombergSatmar HasidimTWU Local 100Vincent ImpellitteriWashington RoeblingWilliam TweedThick bridge cables, police placard abuse - and why you'll get nowhere without corrupting power<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal">Amid the sudden, late onset of a proper winter in <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>, I’ve ridden to work far more often than normal in recent weeks via a longer route over the <st1:place w:st="on"><a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-pain-to-use-but-joy-to-be-on-joys-of.html"><st1:placename w:st="on">Brooklyn</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Bridge</st1:placetype></a></st1:place>. The route, as well as being a pleasant change from my normal ride over the <st1:placename w:st="on">Manhattan</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Bridge</st1:placetype>, cuts down sharply on the amount of time I spend sharing snow-clogged <st1:city w:st="on">Manhattan</st1:city> cross streets with irritable, aggressive drivers.</div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8640/16313881558_097344fd1d.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8640/16313881558_097344fd1d.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Brooklyn Bridge, with cables: New York City corruption,<br />dangling over the East River</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Yet the ride also affords me a chance to ponder a deep and sometimes under-recognised truth about <st1:city w:st="on">New York City</st1:city>. As I cross the bridge, I marvel at the thickness of the bundle of suspension cables that holds the bridge deck in place - and remember the story behind them. The bundle is much bigger than the bridge’s designer, John Roebling, originally intended. Extra, up-to-standard wire had to be added after Washington Roebling, John’s son, discovered that corrupt contractors had sneaked large quantities of sub-standard wire into cables that had already been painstakingly stretched across the <st1:place w:st="on">East River</st1:place>. Graft is literally woven into this bit of the city’s fabric.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Corruption is far from being a mere historic issue, however. The more one grapples with the challenges facing New York City, the more one comes up against relationships that powerful people’s pursuit of money or power have skewed away from working as intended. These pieces of corruption range from relationships that are straightforwardly crooked, as the relationship between the bridge builders and the wire contractors was, through a series of more or less grubby compromises to relationships that seem like a form of democracy. At that end of the scale there are institutions like the Community Boards that are meant to protect communities’ interests in planning decisions but instead end up as the vehicle of noisy vested interests.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mJjHfFz1X4k/VsEOISYV2yI/AAAAAAAAB4w/_OSJyzHNffg/s1600/Broadway%2BBike%2BLane%2BChaos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mJjHfFz1X4k/VsEOISYV2yI/AAAAAAAAB4w/_OSJyzHNffg/s320/Broadway%2BBike%2BLane%2BChaos.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A bike lane built under Janette Sadik-Khan now:<br />the reversal of progress made visible.</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal">Cyclists are peculiarly aware of this dysfunctionality, I think, because it is a profoundly conservative force. It seeks to entrench privileges and works against change. In a city that’s nominally trying to increase its cycle commuting rate from a modest 1 per cent, that means that many of these forces are aligned against making life easier for cyclists. If one doesn’t take into account how these fundamentally regressive relationships shape life in the city, it’s impossible to understand the near-halting of progress on cycling in the city since Janette Sadik-Khan, the city’s one-time transport commissioner, stood down at the end of Michael Bloomberg's time in office in 2013. Without an advocate as forceful and effective as Sadik-Khan, regressive, conservative, corrupt forces have largely overwhelmed the continuing faltering efforts under <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2013/11/a-fort-greene-tragedy-londons-missing.html">Bill de Blasio</a> towards change.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The scale of the challenge is clear if one thinks carefully about one of the few pieces of progress to have been made recently – the <a href="http://www.streetsblog.org/2016/02/03/amsterdam-ave-protected-bike-lane-finally-happening-after-28-13-cb-7-vote/">decision on February 2</a> by <st1:city w:st="on">Manhattan</st1:city>’s Community Board 7 to approve installation of a protected bike lane on <st1:street w:st="on">Amsterdam Avenue</st1:street> on the <st1:place w:st="on">Upper West Side</st1:place>. The decision followed years of study and months of blocking by the co-chairs of the Community Board’s transportation committee. It was passed only after hundreds of advocates turned up at both the February 2 meeting and one in November. If such a vast lobbying effort is required to win approval for a 38-block (less than two miles) project – one that everyone except a handful of angry carowners agrees is sensible and needed - it’s unsurprising that city-wide progress towards building a <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/02/a-barging-garbage-truck-slippery.html">cycling network</a> looks a distant prospect.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IPwajJixMP0/VsEO4u9l9xI/AAAAAAAAB44/oZE3U-3BRW0/s1600/GNH%2B3607%2Bplacard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IPwajJixMP0/VsEO4u9l9xI/AAAAAAAAB44/oZE3U-3BRW0/s320/GNH%2B3607%2Bplacard.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Your licence to park anywhere: the NYPD placard on an SUV<br />parked unnecessarily in the Hoyt St bike lane.</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">My mind started turning to the ubiquity of corruption in <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state> the night after the CB7 vote, as I rode home from work through a damp <st1:place w:st="on">Brooklyn</st1:place>. As I rounded the corner from <st1:street w:st="on">Schermerhorn Street</st1:street> into <st1:street w:st="on">Hoyt Street</st1:street> in downtown <st1:place w:st="on">Brooklyn</st1:place>, I was forced to brake suddenly on finding two big sports utility vehicles blocking the narrow street’s bike lane. Knowing that the area was a popular parking spot for police vehicles from the New York Police Department’s nearby transit bureau, I suspected these were officers’ private vehicles. Sure enough, on inspection the dashboards of both vehicles sported <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/05/an-angry-off-duty-police-man-rainy.html">NYPD</a> placards that police officers regard as essentially permission to park illegally wherever they choose. The following night, another private police vehicle was parked in exactly the same place. Tweets to the NYPD Transit Bureau about the issue went unanswered.</div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TRY9vOxgE1k/VsEPK8EhouI/AAAAAAAAB48/L-oG-t--qOw/s1600/GBJ%2B1610%2BPlacard%2BAbuse%252C%2BFebruary%2B4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TRY9vOxgE1k/VsEPK8EhouI/AAAAAAAAB48/L-oG-t--qOw/s320/GBJ%2B1610%2BPlacard%2BAbuse%252C%2BFebruary%2B4.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sure, pedestrians and cyclists are having to avoid this<br />officer's car while legal parking spaces go unused across<br />the street. But what's the point in joining the NYPD<br />if you can't break the law with impunity?</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The incident reveals a telling type of petty <st1:city w:st="on">New York City</st1:city> corruption. Every morning as I <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/05/brooklyn-bridge-manhattan-and-voice.html">battle my way down Jay St</a> in Brooklyn to reach the Manhattan&nbsp;<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">Bridge</st1:placetype></st1:place>, I encounter scores of illegally-parked vehicles, obstructing turning lanes and other important places on the road. The police leave them untroubled because they bear some kind of official-looking placard – often of dubious provenance - identifying the owner as a police officer, corrections officer or firefighter. The problem illustrates the primacy of organisational culture – in this case, the feeling that emergency personnel should stick together, whatever civilians might say – in many areas of <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>public life. Loyalty to the interests of one’s group – whether one’s fellow professionals, &nbsp;members of the same ethnic group or people who want to defend some other privilege – exerts a far more powerful force in the city than most of the formal rules meant to govern it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I also sometimes encounter on <st1:street w:st="on">Jay St</st1:street> a red-light sting for cyclists, at the relatively quiet junction of <st1:street w:st="on">Jay St</st1:street> and Concord St. The intersection is the only point on <st1:street w:st="on">Jay St</st1:street>– where there is a daily riot of highly dangerous illegal double-parking, illegal U-Turns and crosswalk blocking – where I regularly see enforcement activity. In a city where motorists are still often portrayed as a proxy for ordinary, working-class New Yorkers, it is far easier for the police to <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-street-drug-arrest-crackdown-on.html">pick on relatively powerless cyclists</a> to make up their monthly ticket totals than to take the rational course of trying to stamp out the behaviour that does most damage. Since the police effectively wield far greater power than the mayor, there is little to stop police officers from engaging in this casual sleight of hand.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DTNr2BdohN8/VsEQNuuNP5I/AAAAAAAAB5I/ZFsgVM3ThXc/s1600/Jay%2BStreet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DTNr2BdohN8/VsEQNuuNP5I/AAAAAAAAB5I/ZFsgVM3ThXc/s320/Jay%2BStreet.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A scene from a Jay St commute: it's pretty obvious how<br />serious a problem cyclist behaviour is here.</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">None of this is to say, of course, that corruption both grave and petty is a uniquely US or <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state> phenomenon. When I lived in <st1:city w:st="on">Budapest</st1:city>, I <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-no-man-is-island-even-in-his-car.html">travelled around post-Communist societies </a>far more scarred by corruption than the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region>. It is also clear that <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state> is far from being the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region>’s most corruptly-run city. It would seem almost rude to try to displace either <st1:city w:st="on">Chicago</st1:city> or <st1:city w:st="on">New Orleans</st1:city> from their hard-won places at the top of that league table.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Yet there is a peculiarly <st1:city w:st="on">New York City</st1:city> combination of factors that works to overwhelm many positive initiatives, including efforts to promote more active transport.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Much of the power over the city is exercised by a legislature 150 miles away in <st1:city w:st="on">Albany</st1:city>that often seems to view the city as little more than a source of funds. It is telling that in the recent corruption trial of <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/bc84f0aa-a272-11e4-9630-00144feab7de.html#axzz40BohHLqk">Sheldon Silver</a>, the former speaker of the state assembly, the defence’s (ultimately unsuccessful) case was essentially that the speaker had acted little differently from other members of the state legislature.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5482/14143332998_83063fb0fd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5482/14143332998_83063fb0fd.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Police supervise blocking of the sidewalk and bike lanes<br />outside Satmar headquarters on a previous occasion, in<br />June 2014. This is what the privilege of being a powerful<br />voting bloc in New York City buys you.</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>’s diversity also means the city teems with different ethnic groups whom politicians can court in return for votes and money. This past Wednesday, for example, I noticed a (since-deleted) Tweet from the @HQSatmar account – from the headquarters of the powerful Satmar Hasidic Jewish community – thanking the local 90<sup>th</sup> NYPD precinct for allowing them to park their cars across the Kent Avenue two-way bike lane during a community wedding. The apparent official approval for this practice – which forces cyclists and pedestrians out into fast-moving traffic on a blind bend – illustrates how mere convenience for a powerful group can easily trump the law and the lives and health of less powerful groups.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">A different version of a similar phenomenon was at work when a series of members of the New York City Council who had previously been supportive of safer streets legislation scurried to support amendments that would effectively have <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/02/a-williamsburg-tragedy-century-old.html">excused bus drivers who killed people</a>. It is no coincidence, I suspect, that Transport Workers’ Union Local 100, the bus drivers’ union, is a significant funder of <st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place> political races.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The presence of this mass of interest groups willing to defy the mayor’s formal authority has long made governing <st1:city w:st="on">New York City</st1:city> one of the most formidable tasks in US politics. The <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Brooklyn</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Bridge</st1:placetype></st1:place> corruption was a result, for example, of the presence on the bridge company’s board of directors of William Tweed, the famously corrupt boss of Tammany Hall, the hugely influential Irish-American political club. Vincent <span style="background: white; color: #252525;">Impellitteri</span> famously became leader of <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>’s city council – and subsequently, by default, mayor when the incumbent resigned – simply because he was an Italian from <st1:city w:st="on">Manhattan</st1:city>. He was needed to balance out a Democratic slate for top jobs that already had on it an Irishman from Brooklyn and a Jew from the <st1:place w:st="on">Bronx</st1:place>.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #252525;"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7271/6881934230_b68922c259.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7271/6881934230_b68922c259.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">London's cycle facilities can also be imperfect,<br />but there is a less pervasive sense<br />of unaccountability</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #252525;">It is far easier, it seems to me, to work the levers of power in <st1:city w:st="on"><a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2012/09/farewell-to-london-where-cyclings.html">London</a></st1:city>, where identity politics plays a far smaller role, than in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>. It is no coincidence that cities in relatively uncorrupt northern <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place> have had far more success in steering through complex transport projects such as cycling networks and high-quality public transit than southern European countries with a longer tradition of corruption.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #252525;">The flipside of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York City</st1:place></st1:city>’s ungovernability, meanwhile, is that it has been disproportionately shaped by the handful of people with the mix of skill and ruthlessness needed to get things done. In the 20<sup>th</sup> Century, tragically, the most notable such person was <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-terrifying-avenue-new-mayor-and-how.html">Robert Moses</a>, the “master builder,” who, holding an unconstitutional mix of state and city jobs, promoted car-dependence by halting subway building and diverting resources to building a poorly-planned highway network, which wrecked many neighbourhoods.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #252525;">So far in the 21<sup>st</sup> century, Sadik-Khan, who will celebrate her achievements in a new book out on March 8, has proved more adept than most at overcoming the city’s corrupt conservatism. She closed some of the streets through Times Square, put bike lanes down Broadway and many other important streets and forced a badly-needed bike lane down Prospect Park West in <st1:place w:st="on">Brooklyn</st1:place>. The Prospect Park West project – over which a handful of rich locals continue to sue the city – went in over the noisy objections of, among others, the wife of <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>’s senior <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> senator. Sadik-Khan oversaw huge increases in the numbers of people cycling, even if cycling’s share of trips remains negligible.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #252525;">Yet it is clear that, while Sadik-Khan did a superb job of forcing through building projects, she was not able to make activists for cycling and walking a group that <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state> politicians genuinely had to fear. Transportation Alternatives and other lobbyists for a saner, more rational transport system remain supplicants to the city’s power brokers, rather than one of the successful groups that the power brokers have to court.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qoNUzCoqo18/VsEPsjUbFPI/AAAAAAAAB5A/Zq3sdPPKgW8/s1600/Herald%2BSquare%2Bbike%2Blane%2Bblockage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qoNUzCoqo18/VsEPsjUbFPI/AAAAAAAAB5A/Zq3sdPPKgW8/s320/Herald%2BSquare%2Bbike%2Blane%2Bblockage.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">NYPD vehicles block the Broadway bike lane:<br />the lack of explanation is as eloquent as any explanation</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #252525;">One evening in early December, I encountered depressing evidence of the fate of groups who fail to get themselves into a sufficiently strong position in the city’s pecking order. I rode down the Broadway bike lanes as far as <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Herald Square</st1:address></st1:street>, by Macy’s department store in midtown. But at <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Herald Square</st1:address></st1:street>– which Sadik-Khan still holds up as an example of what can be achieved, with effort – I encountered two large police SUVs parked across the bike lane, closing it. I have heard so many reports since from other cyclists that I gather the police have more or less permanently barricaded the route.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #252525;">There were no explanations, diversion signs or notices to alert cyclists to the change. The closure appeared to be a result of an entirely arbitrary police decision that cyclists could no longer use the route built for them only a few years ago. But, as I gazed at the police vehicles parked sullenly across my path, that almost seemed to be part of the point.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #252525;">“We can do this to you whenever we want,” they seemed to be saying. “Now what are you going to do about it?”<o:p></o:p></span></div></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2016/02/thick-bridge-cables-police-placard.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-8108177188585665532Mon, 08 Feb 2016 00:13:00 +00002016-02-08T09:51:59.228-05:00aggressionCycling in Londoncycling in New York Cityinteractions on streetsinterpersonal relationshipsroad designChristmas Eve harassment, a sociopath in Greenwich Village - and how design can cut out honking<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal">It was always going to be a moderately challenging bike ride. It was the early evening of Christmas Eve and, after it emerged that our local wine merchants was already shut, I and my bike had been deputed to lug back from somewhere further away the wine supply for the holiday season. Even a solidly-built touring bike is apt to handle oddly when laden down with 12 bottles full of wine.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yRZ2hYGL_4M/VrfbRxx1_2I/AAAAAAAAB3Q/dRC8aQ4fsTU/s1600/interfereladen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="209" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yRZ2hYGL_4M/VrfbRxx1_2I/AAAAAAAAB3Q/dRC8aQ4fsTU/s320/interfereladen.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My bike laden with groceries: not the machine on which<br />to face harassment</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">But the trip became significantly more stressful after the driver of an SUV started driving close behind me, honking, in an effort to bully me out of the way. I was riding well out in the lane, to avoid a deep and dangerous crack in the tarmac. That outraged the driver, who thought he shouldn’t have to cross into the neighbouring lane to pass me.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“I thought you should be riding further to the left,” he said, when I found him unloading passengers near my building and asked what had provoked him.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“There was a huge crack in the road, which I was avoiding,” I told him.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“I didn’t know that,” he replied.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“Which is exactly why you should concentrate on overtaking me safely, and not trying to get me to ride in the place of the road you think I should,” I said.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The incident was one of countless times I’ve had to cope with road users’ efforts to bend someone else’s driving, cycling or walking to their will. Just a few weeks before the Christmas Eve incident, I’d had a driver deliberately accelerate his SUV at me in <st1:place w:st="on">Greenwich Village</st1:place>after I shouted out to him to alert him to my presence, to ensure he didn’t swing across my path.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Yet I also recognise there are plenty of times I try to influence other road users to prevent their harming me. I had, after all, shouted at the driver in <st1:place w:st="on">Greenwich Village</st1:place> to try to ensure he didn’t drive into me.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-I6KkKnxtUpY/Vrfbh9_ry7I/AAAAAAAAB3U/RD1Q8uB5x5M/s1600/interferemixing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-I6KkKnxtUpY/Vrfbh9_ry7I/AAAAAAAAB3U/RD1Q8uB5x5M/s320/interferemixing.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A mixing zone on the Broadway bike lane:<br />traffic engineers think this a model way to handle bike traffic</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">The question is when it’s legitimate to try to influence other road users’ behaviour and when it’s bullying. Most importantly, it’s vital to ask why there’s all this frustration in the first place and whether it can be averted.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Christmas Eve incident was emblematic of the worst kind of desire to control other users because of the infuriatingly <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-twitter-row-gospel-passage-and-why.html">wrong-headed thinking</a> that lay behind it. The driver insisted he’d wanted me over nearer the parked cars because he wanted, he said, to pass me safely without causing an “accident”. It’s the thinking that lies behind vast numbers of drivers’ complaints about cyclists and pedestrians – a thinking on the drivers’ part that <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/12/first-avenue-harassment-talking-down-to.html">they’re the serious adults</a> in the situation, while pedestrians and cyclists are heedless, child-like creatures who have no idea of the danger they’re facing.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The thinking betrays a wholesale failure to understand that the driver has prime responsibility for moving his vehicle safely and that safety doesn’t consist primarily of people’s staying out of his or her way. The driver eventually seriously endangered me because I veered into the crack in the road and came close to losing control of the bike.</div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BxLQaFSveHc/Vrfb3kwxDII/AAAAAAAAB3Y/-9cVR8HFEV0/s1600/interferecrossing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BxLQaFSveHc/Vrfb3kwxDII/AAAAAAAAB3Y/-9cVR8HFEV0/s320/interferecrossing.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chaos at a SoHo crosswalk: if the cyclists of pedestrians<br />yell at the drivers here, they're punching up</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The fatuousness of this thinking doesn’t stop its being widespread. It’s one of the signature features of the <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/12/first-avenue-harassment-talking-down-to.html">driving culture</a>that stems from <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>’s poor enforcement and dreadful road design that drivers honk all the time. Every time a driver sounds his or her horn as a rebuke or to prompt someone to move, it’s an effort to control the other person’s actions. It’s nearly always an effort to make life more convenient for the person doing the honking.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The big difference between the honking, tailgating behaviour and my regular pleas to drivers to look out for me or stop during an illegal move across my path is the power balance. When I ride through an intersection crying out “Watch out! Wait there!” at drivers, I’m trying to get them to follow rules meant to protect vulnerable road users in cycle lanes and crosswalks. There seems to me a huge moral difference between such a “punching up” effort to control others and the “punching down” effort of drivers like the Christmas Eve minivan drivers to sweep people aside as mere inconvenient obstacles.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-snRmV23slFs/VrfcFkvRBrI/AAAAAAAAB3c/SM_5tG5vpS4/s1600/interferesnow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-snRmV23slFs/VrfcFkvRBrI/AAAAAAAAB3c/SM_5tG5vpS4/s320/interferesnow.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Park Slope snow the day after the January 23 blizzard:<br />much of this was still affecting the roads a week later</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Yet it was an incident last Sunday, January 31, that brought home to me the reason for all this frustrated communication and how it can be eliminated. I was riding up <st1:street w:st="on">7<sup>th</sup> St</st1:street> in Park Slope, near my home, on my <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/07/an-old-fashioned-prejudice-wasted-bronx.html">weekly journey to church</a>. I would normally when harassed by drivers on that trip move confidently into the middle of the lane and prevent their passing until the next intersection. But, last Sunday, unmelted snow from the January 23 blizzard meant the lanes were narrower and harder to navigate. I felt even less confident than normal about trying&nbsp; to “control the lane”, as vehicular cyclists put it.<br /><br />Consequently, when a driver started tailgating me, I meekly moved over&nbsp; to the side of the road and let him pass. A change in the structure of the road had changed, I suddenly realised, my confidence in influencing other road users’ behaviour.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">That, it came home to me, was critical to all the incidents I encountered. The driver who’d harassed me on Christmas Eve had been deceived by the layout of Court St – which allows two uninterrupted streams of one-way traffic on an urban main street – into thinking he was on little short of a limited-access highway. The driver who drove at me in <st1:place w:st="on">Greenwich Village</st1:place> was angry partly that I was appearing in his path from a poorly-marked, oddly-placed bike lane that must have made it feel to him as if I were deliberately obstructing him. The dreadful “mixing areas” that bring together left-turning drivers and cyclists going straight ahead on many <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state> streets are designed like freeway sliproads, to allow turning drivers to slow down without impeding those going straight ahead. While the drivers clearly should obey the rules and yield to the cyclists riding into these areas, it’s unsurprising that so few do.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The problems in <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>, while less grave than in many parts of the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region>, are far more acute than those in <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>, where I’ve <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2012/09/farewell-to-london-where-cyclings.html">done most of my cycling as an adult</a>. Roads in <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>, while still imperfect for cyclists, are filled with multiple cues to tell drivers what speed to drive and who has priority.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I now recognise <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>’s honking problem for what it is. It’s the sound of the expectations that the infrastructure has given drivers being dashed against a messy reality that the street design doesn’t reflect.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6vatz_T39p0/VrfbAILMtOI/AAAAAAAAB3M/lGlG1BT1KMA/s1600/interferecourt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6vatz_T39p0/VrfbAILMtOI/AAAAAAAAB3M/lGlG1BT1KMA/s320/interferecourt.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Court St tells drivers, "Go as fast as you like. It's pretty much<br />a freeway."</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal">Better street design isn’t the only solution to the problem. It’s noticeable, for example, that one almost never sees bicycles chained to the railings at subway entrances. There’s a general expectation that bicycles chained in such areas will be removed and cyclists have adapted their behaviour to cater to that. There’s little doubt that similarly <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/12/rage-in-south-london-tragedy-in-fort.html">consistent enforcement of rules</a> about driving might have similarly striking results. That's one of many reasons why New York <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-precinct-house-string-of-deaths-and.html">needs more speed cameras</a>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But it’s pretty clear that it’s vital to rebuild urban streets so that they no longer look like urban freeways. Cycle lanes should never be painted, as most are at present, in <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/10/an-oafish-limousine-driver-english.html">the most dangerous part of the street</a>. Areas designed to bring cyclists and motorists across each other’s paths shouldn’t look like they can be navigated at 30mph.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">For the moment, however, those of us who ride are forced to put up with occasional bullying like that I encountered on Christmas Eve – and to do our best to counter it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In a city as disorderly as <st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place>, however, that can take real energy and flair – as I discovered one morning last summer as I rode up <st1:street w:st="on">1<sup>st</sup> Avenue</st1:street>towards the New York Public Library.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Around 17<sup>th</sup> St, I encountered, as so often, a line of left-turning drivers blocking the bike-and-car mixing zone as I sought to ride straight ahead. I bleated, “Wait there! Stop!” - to little effect.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">A Black cycle courier who slipped through the gap between me and the rearmost car showed me the level of determination needed to affect the behaviour of <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>drivers.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“No,” he shouted at the driver, before administering a resounding slap to a side panel. “You gonna resPECT this one, Muthafucka!”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Helped more by the drivers’ astonishment than by any actual change of heart, we both slipped by the previously threatening drivers, and headed on north.</div></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2016/02/christmas-eve-harassment-sociopath-in.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-5803711244715485416Mon, 28 Dec 2015 04:02:00 +00002015-12-28T09:14:18.733-05:00criminal justiceFort GreeneMarlon Sewellsafe streetsVictoria NicodemusVision ZeroRage in South London, a tragedy in Fort Greene - and why it matters to punish bad drivers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal">It was a frustration as intense as any I’ve ever felt. I’d <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/10/a-south-london-collision-arguing-about.html">just been hit</a> as I rode across Newington Causeway, near Elephant &amp; Castle in <st1:place w:st="on">South London</st1:place>, by another cyclist who’d ridden fast through a red light. Yet, when I made it clear I planned to call the police, he picked up his bike and rode off as fast as he could. A mixture of anger and frustrated impotence welled up inside me. The other rider, I realised, would face no consequences at all for prioritising his own convenience over my safety.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I’ve recalled how I felt following that incident in March 2009 several times in the last few weeks as I’ve contemplated <st1:city w:st="on">New York City</st1:city>’s response to some of the appalling tragedies on the city’s roads. <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>’s law enforcers often seem to shrug off instances of astonishingly poor negligent driving – including many that kill entirely blameless people – as casually as that rider six years ago picked up his fixie and rode off. For example, Marlon Sewell, who <a href="http://gothamist.com/2015/12/07/suv_driver_kills_30-yr-old_woman_on.php">drove his SUV onto a sidewalk in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">Fort</st1:placetype> <st1:placename w:st="on">Greene</st1:placename></st1:place></a>on December 6 and killed Victoria Nicodemus, currently faces <a href="http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/12/07/victoria-nicodemus-14th-person-killed-by-curb-jumping-nyc-driver-in-2015/">only two,relatively minor charges</a>: one for driving without a licence and the other for driving without insurance.</div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h-aAurXwOxg/VoCqjCTX8PI/AAAAAAAABx8/OML_shb5hpg/s1600/Victoria%2BNicodemus%2Bvigil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h-aAurXwOxg/VoCqjCTX8PI/AAAAAAAABx8/OML_shb5hpg/s320/Victoria%2BNicodemus%2Bvigil.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Attendees at the vigil for Victoria Nicodemus: killed on the<br />sidewalk but, as far as Brooklyn law enforcement's concerned,<br />hey, it's the kind of thing any of us could do.</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">At a vigil at the site of the crash on December 22, <st1:state w:st="on">Victoria</st1:state>’s brothers and a series of politicians all lined up to demand&nbsp;<a href="http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/12/23/family-of-victoria-nicodemus-demands-justice-for-victims-of-traffic-violence/">Mr Sewell be prosecuted</a> “to the fullest extent of the law”. I recognised anger and frustration similar to what I felt following the crash at Elephant &amp; Castle - though clearly, given the crash’s gravity, theirs was immeasurably deeper and more intense.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It’s a frustration that people concerned about street safety in many parts of the world share. <st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region>cycling and walking activists often express astonishment at the low level of charges that drivers who kill or maim people in the <st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region> face and at the apparently light sentences facing those convicted.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Yet I also occasionally hear dissenting voices. Isn’t it ironic, they ask, that activists who mostly doubt the appropriateness of harsh prison sentences call for them over road crashes? Rabi Abonour, a valued member of <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>’s street safety movement, supplied such a voice after Nicodemus’s death, writing that he was “uncomfortable” with the calls for murder or manslaughter charges.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><div dir="ltr" lang="en">4. We have huge problems with criminal justice in this country. Putting more people in jail doesn't fix anything.</div>— Rabi Abonour (@rabonour) <a href="https://twitter.com/rabonour/status/673914111101706245">December 7, 2015</a></blockquote><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“We have huge problems with criminal justice in this country,” he wrote. “Putting more people in jail doesn't fix anything.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It’s a complaint that someone writing in the UK could also, to a lesser extent, make, given the UK’s unusual propensity compared with other European countries, for&nbsp; putting people&nbsp; in prison.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Pushing for more enforcement, Rabi went on, was almost certainly going to end up meaning more people of colour were prosecuted than white people.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“We need to fix the racism of our criminal justice system before we push for more felony charges against dangerous drivers,” he wrote.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The critical question is how to balance the appropriate demand that drivers face consequences for their bad behaviour with the understanding that the criminal justice system is an imprecise, often unfair tool for achieving that goal.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-U--iL_LLiV0/VoCtrvLwu_I/AAAAAAAAByI/Yr9qmKqJxEw/s1600/TLC%2BComplaint%2BPicture%2BTwo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-U--iL_LLiV0/VoCtrvLwu_I/AAAAAAAAByI/Yr9qmKqJxEw/s320/TLC%2BComplaint%2BPicture%2BTwo.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Occasion for liberal guilt: the corner where I got into a row<br />that ended in a driver's receiving a worryingly<br />disproportionate fine.</td></tr></tbody></table>&nbsp;I should stress that I yield to no-one in my propensity for liberal guilt. I continue to feel uneasy, for example, about the punishment meted out to a car service driver who grabbed for my camera and bike and yelled abuse at me in March 2014. The driver – who was angry that I tried to take a picture of his vehicle blocking a bike lane – was fined $3,050 – an excessive amount, in my view – after he failed to turn up at <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/06/an-idle-hour-worried-taxi-drivers-and.html">the Taxi and Limousine Commission hearing</a> about the case. Drivers who knew how to game the system – enter a guilty plea for far lesser charges and have the gravest counts dropped – generally faced fines of no more than $300. His punishment left me feeling I’d participated in a rather grubby business. There is a tendency across the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region> criminal justice system for prosecutors to use Draconian charges to scare defendants into striking a plea bargain. It’s unsurprising – and deplorable - that there are many reports of even the innocent being scared into accepting such deals.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Yet those of us <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-changing-junction-political-bike-ride.html">on the political left </a>often, I think, misunderstand a critical part of the criminal justice system’s role. The system certainly exists to deter criminals and to reform those who have already committed crimes. But it is also vital that the system <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-protest-march-german-thinker-and-how.html">expresses society’s rage</a> at those who violate its rules and do unjustified harm to others. There is an inevitable and appropriate element in many criminal sentences related to exacting retribution for the wrongdoer’s violation of the norm that members of a society should not do unjustified harm to one another. It is a vital part of society’s valuing of people’s property, health and lives that it should be so.<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sThqTYmL1LI/VoCun6I5BTI/AAAAAAAAByg/hoibAA0MbR0/s1600/Broadway%2BBike%2BLane%2BChaos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sThqTYmL1LI/VoCun6I5BTI/AAAAAAAAByg/hoibAA0MbR0/s320/Broadway%2BBike%2BLane%2BChaos.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">New York criminal justice is relaxed about bad driving -<br />and people wonder how the streets end up looking like this.</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It seems to me, based on media reports, that a criminal justice system that valued human life appropriately would indeed charge Marlon Sewell with serious offences resulting in a prison sentence of at least a few years. Sewell’s licence had been suspended in March and he was cited three times for speeding in one week in November. Witnesses say he was driving too fast when he mounted the sidewalk. He can have been under no illusions either that he was legally free to drive or that his driving was of an acceptable standard. The system currently plans to treat Mr Sewell’s killing of her as essentially little more than a matter of not having the right paperwork in order.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">While it is, of course, fatuous to call the crime murder – it lacked the targeted malice for that – it can be only because the killer was a car driver that the case is currently being treated differently from other deaths through negligence. It is hard to imagine that if Sewell had been driving drunk – the one type of negligent driving most US prosecutors currently take seriously – he would be facing such minor charges.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Yet the tragedy of many criminal justice systems worldwide lies less in how they treat people like Marlon Sewell once they’ve killed someone than in their readiness to let matters get that far. <st1:city w:st="on">New York City</st1:city>’s authorities essentially believe it more important that people should be free to drive around the city as they please than that the unlicensed or uninsured should face regular checks to prevent them from doing so. The authorities view it as more important that traffic should flow freely and drivers’ privacy be respected than that 30-year-old Ms Nicodemus should be able to walk down a sidewalk unmolested by speeding vehicles. It is at this stage – where a tendency to dangerous behaviour can be detected, challenged and corrected – that the criminal justice system should be working, in Rabi’s words, <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-crash-on-brixton-road-backsliding-on.html">to “fix” things</a>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NzP2etCNRGw/VoCw02egI7I/AAAAAAAABy4/utXpmM1GY24/s1600/Schermerhorn%2BChaos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NzP2etCNRGw/VoCw02egI7I/AAAAAAAABy4/utXpmM1GY24/s320/Schermerhorn%2BChaos.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Two drivers block the bike box while a third runs a red<br />to make an illegal left turn: scenes from a culture<br />of consequence-free bad driving</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The logic of the existing system, meanwhile, reflects grubby realities about <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region>justice that both Rabi and I would like to alter. Unfettered driving is tolerated at least in part because it is the means of transport that has come to seem “natural” for the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region>’s rich and powerful. Many in authority significantly underestimate driving’s drawbacks because those who suffer the pollution, deaths and injuries are disproportionately poor and, consequently, members of ethnic minorities. While Mr Sewell is black and Ms Nicodemus was white, the concentration of car ownership among the better-off means that well-off whites are disproportionately likely to be killer-drivers. Poor members of ethnic minorities are disproportionately likely to be their victims.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">None of this is to say that those concerned about street safety around the world should shrug their shoulders at the shortcomings of their criminal justice systems and push for harsh punishments for dangerous drivers regardless. It is vital, for example, that cities like <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state> increase their dependence on automated cameras to detect routine speeding and right-of-way violations. Such a move would, <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-precinct-house-string-of-deaths-and.html">I have argued before</a>, help both to reduce the problems caused by police officers’ racial biases and to prevent appalling incidents like the death of Sandra Bland in a Texas jail after she was stopped for a nonsensical, minor violation. Activists should insist that in traffic enforcement, as in non-traffic crime, law enforcement officials develop plans to detect people who are apt to cause harm to others and seek to nudge them with minor punishments – points on their licences, compulsory retesting or restrictions on their licences – designed to make them address their behaviour and attitudes. Many of <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>’s streets are also <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/12/first-avenue-harassment-talking-down-to.html">long overdue redesigns</a> that would encourage better driving.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2AFb-bES9bk/VoCv_Zb1zbI/AAAAAAAAByw/LEYnbq_Jcrw/s1600/Allen%2BSt%2Bchaos.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2AFb-bES9bk/VoCv_Zb1zbI/AAAAAAAAByw/LEYnbq_Jcrw/s320/Allen%2BSt%2Bchaos.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Allen St in Chinatown one recent morning:<br />a scene from a city that lets drivers off the hook.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It remains clear to me, nevertheless, that a driver takes on a serious responsibility when he or she starts driving in a car. It is impossible to believe that Marlon Sewell, after multiple run-ins with the law over his driving, can have been unaware how serious the consequences of his behaviour could be. As a result of his negligent driving, he has taken away everything the 30-year-old art curator had and much that her family and boyfriend had. The horror of the event, it seems to me, is less that people are calling for Mr Sewell to face serious charges for his actions than that there is such profound moral confusion over it. The New York Daily News, for example, bafflingly quoted an apparent witness to the tragedy as largely exonerating Mr Sewell, saying that he would have Ms Nicodemus’s death on his conscience forever. The real villain, <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/woman-eats-pizza-walks-brooklyn-crash-scene-article-1.2457626">the piece alleged</a>, was a bystander who, dazed after witnessing the crash, took a bite from the pizza she had just bought.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Standing at the site of the crash on Wednesday with others, it was both horrific to contemplate what had happened there and all too easy to imagine. Other drivers kept venting their frustration at the slight congestion from the vigil by honking their horns, blocking crosswalks and exhibiting the kind of behaviour that contributes to <st1:city w:st="on">New York City</st1:city>’s appalling street safety record. As Ms Nicodemus’s family and colleagues talked about her, the tragedy was not only that she was clearly a unique and talented individual but to think of how the near-daily other tragedies on the city’s streets must be wiping out others just as brilliant and loveable.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-v5reo2qJ_VI/VoCvaeJYNbI/AAAAAAAAByo/dIQJ4X4CP_A/s1600/Safe%2BCity%2Bsign.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-v5reo2qJ_VI/VoCvaeJYNbI/AAAAAAAAByo/dIQJ4X4CP_A/s320/Safe%2BCity%2Bsign.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An installation that Victoria Nicodemus'<br />colleagues made after her death: likely<br />to prove an empty plea as long as bad driving<br />is effectively ignored.</td></tr></tbody></table>A harsh sentence for Mr Sewell would not, of course, either bring back the woman he killed or on its own do much to solve the deep-seated problems. But there was also an unmistakeable sense at the vigil that the criminal justice system had been complicit in contributing to her death. It is appropriate to feel a surge of anger at the behaviour of drivers like Mr Sewell. Good societies must demand that people who breach the law so flagrantly face serious consequences.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It is obviously correct that the criminal justice system’s biases should be eradicated. It&nbsp; is obviously correct that unthinking, harsh punishments solve nothing. It is also obviously correct that the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region>&nbsp; has relied on prison too much to solve its social problems. In particular, the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region> has imprisoned far too many young black men for drug offences that in a better-ordered society would not be offences at all.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Yet it is equally clearly true, it seems to me, that a system that defines Marlon Sewell’s driving on December 6 as warranting no more than two warrants for technical violations is morally bankrupt. It is a system that will continue to be incapable of preventing other people – mostly poorer, more marginalised people than Ms Nicodemus – from dying. Their being crushed on sidewalks, in crosswalks and bike lanes by drivers will then be dismissed by the authorities as little more than an understandable slip.</div></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/12/rage-in-south-london-tragedy-in-fort.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3002171964909690430.post-7838859845384899562Sun, 06 Dec 2015 22:39:00 +00002016-06-10T12:56:05.062-04:00culturescyclingcycling in New York CityKristian LekaLos AngelesLouis PerezMike SimanowitzNyanna Aquilnycdrivingcultureroad culturessafetyFirst Avenue Harassment, Talking Down to Pedestrians - and a Culture That Needs to Change<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">There could hardly have been a clearer illustration of what’s wrong with the culture of <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>’s city streets. Two Saturdays ago, as I rode my bike up 1<sup>st</sup> Avenue on the Upper East Side towards the Metropolitan Museum, I succeeded in shouting forcefully enough to get one turning driver to yield to me momentarily – as legally required – as I rode straight on through an intersection. But his brief slowing – more a result of confusion at my shouting, I think, than a genuine effort to let me through – enraged another driver waiting to turn.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“C’mon – let’s go!” he yelled out of his window at the driver who’d slowed, urging him, in effect, to drive over me.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rzlbshKmcFA/VmSzs7iuBGI/AAAAAAAABvE/EgtydQl9w-Q/s1600/Safety%2BFirst%2BAvenue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rzlbshKmcFA/VmSzs7iuBGI/AAAAAAAABvE/EgtydQl9w-Q/s320/Safety%2BFirst%2BAvenue.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Poorly-designed intersections and illegal maneouvres<br />by drivers: welcome to First Avenue</td></tr></tbody></table></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">It’s the kind of incident I’ve noticed many times in recent weeks as I’ve been trying to understand the persistently high death toll on New York’s streets – particularly a dreadful spate of 12 pedestrian deaths between October 31 and November 11. It’s common to see drivers honk loudly at others who have correctly yielded to pedestrians in crosswalks. I’ve personally been on the receiving end of a fair amount of harassment from drivers who imagined they had a right to overtake me even in places where it was unsafe.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">This impatience from city drivers shapes the atmosphere, making pedestrians and cyclists fearful and making the business of using the streets often miserable and <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-frightened-old-man-angry-taxi-driver.html">stressful</a> for everyone else. Many drivers, traffic planners and police officers seem to accept this aggressive driving culture as an almost charming symptom of the city’s general bustle and as unchangeable as the weather. They seem to regard anyone who breaks the formal law while acting within the limits of this&nbsp;<a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2012/04/am-i-real-to-you-noam-chomsky-and-real.html">accepted style of driving</a> as essentially not culpable.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-y3-1GcCqDpY/VmS0QL5KOBI/AAAAAAAABvM/vOJj-c2Jvz4/s1600/Safety%2BPedestrians%2Band%2BEmpire%2BState%2BBuilding.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-y3-1GcCqDpY/VmS0QL5KOBI/AAAAAAAABvM/vOJj-c2Jvz4/s320/Safety%2BPedestrians%2Band%2BEmpire%2BState%2BBuilding.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">New York City pedestrians: their own worst<br />enemies, except for all the bigger, more<br />dangerous enemies.</td></tr></tbody></table></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The area’s political class are also worryingly oblivious to the nature of the problem. On November 10, Mike Simanowitz, a member of the New York State assembly, chose at a press conference organised by the New York Police Department’s 109th precinct to <a href="http://gothamist.com/2015/11/11/vision_zero_nypd_jaywalking.php">criticise pedestrians for creating the problems</a> themselves. It was as if he was complaining about the timidity of his pet mice while doing nothing about the gang of unruly cats rampaging through his house.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“If you're crossing in the middle of the street, you're wrong, you're endangering yourself, you're endangering others, you're endangering drivers," Mr Simanowitz said.</span><br /><span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span><span lang="EN-GB">He gave no explanation of how pedestrian behaviour might endanger drivers.</span><br /><span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span><span lang="EN-GB">“Cross at the green, not in-between, and hopefully we will be able to reduce the number of traffic fatalities," he added.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">There is, of course, something fundamentally nebulous about the claim that a set of observed behaviours adds up to a “culture”. I resist sweeping statements about how “bikers” as a whole behave or stereotypes about British people or white people or all the other various groups to which I belong.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Yet I was struck when visiting Los Angeles in mid-November at how differently the average driver behaved from his or her New York counterpart. Los Angeles drivers seem when yielding to pedestrians to stop the car well outside the crosswalk until the pedestrian is out of the way. Used to New York drivers’ constant harrying of pedestrians to hurry them out of crosswalks, I found their stopping at that point so freakish that I’d hesitate a little, wondering what was wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">LA drivers meanwhile had a tendency to creep forward into the crosswalk if anticipating they might be able to make a coveted right-turn on a red light (permitted when no pedestrians are crossing). Once clear of intersections, they would take off at horrendous speeds, encouraged by the city’s wide streets.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CdzSYI8Ubs0/VmS0lwOOqfI/AAAAAAAABvU/vfkKkIzVSJY/s1600/Safety%2BHollywood%2BBoulevard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CdzSYI8Ubs0/VmS0lwOOqfI/AAAAAAAABvU/vfkKkIzVSJY/s320/Safety%2BHollywood%2BBoulevard.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Traffic on Hollywood Boulevard: surprisingly accommodating<br />to basic standards of decency.</td></tr></tbody></table></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The contrasting patterns of behaviour reflect the two cities’ different road conditions. In <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>, on <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Manhattan</st1:place></st1:city>avenues and many other places, there can be 20 intersections every mile, with <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2012/07/grids-lights-and-why-new-yorks-traffic.html">each controlled by traffic lights</a>. In drivers, New Yorkers’ famed impatience expresses itself in a desperate desire to reach the next traffic light before it has been red for too long. Angelenos are famously more laid back – and they can make up for any delay at an intersection by speeding up on the long spaces between lights.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The moment one starts looking for the jostling for position in New York, however, it’s everywhere. If I position myself safely at the head of a line of traffic waiting at a red light, I will typically find the driver first in the line creeping up alongside me, putting me in precisely the proximity to him I was trying to avoid. Every morning, as I ride down Smith St in Brooklyn, I find drivers seeking to turn from side streets have turned half-way through the intersection, blocking the cycle lane and crosswalks, to reserve their rightful place in the street’s slow-moving traffic jam. Drivers are so desperate to get out of parking spaces and into the traffic that they seem truly to look at what's going on only once they're under way down the street.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">These habits are far more than local foibles like New Yorkers’ tendency to be rude or fondness for street food. New York city bus drivers alone <a href="http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/11/30/rukhsana-khan-41-third-pedestrian-killed-by-mta-bus-driver-in-november/">killed three pedestrians</a> in November – two hit by drivers turning through crosswalks and another hit by a driver apparently speeding. The police appear to be attributing a crash on October 31 that killed Louis Perez, 64, Nyanna Aquil, 10, and Kristian Leka, 24, on a sidewalk in The Bronx to the driver’s “medical issue”. But, whatever happened immediately before the crash, the driver was<a href="http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/11/02/sidewalks-are-no-sanctuary-driver-jumps-curb-kills-3-in-the-bronx/"> driving a powerful Dodge Charger car </a>at such a speed that it became airborne after hitting another car and landed on top of the victims. A read through Radio WNYC’s list of <a href="http://project.wnyc.org/traffic-deaths-2015/">this year’s traffic fatalities</a> – 228 at the time of writing – reveals a steady stream of people killed by drivers ignoring their right of way, driving too fast or mounting a sidewalk after crashes resulting from excessive speed.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_xiz6i5MdPU/VmS05K7Tq2I/AAAAAAAABvc/UNVUGtbXBeE/s1600/Safety%2BAmsterdam%2BAve%2Bcars.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_xiz6i5MdPU/VmS05K7Tq2I/AAAAAAAABvc/UNVUGtbXBeE/s320/Safety%2BAmsterdam%2BAve%2Bcars.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">125th St in Harlem: I see excessive speed and fast, risky<br />turns. But a New York assembly member sees this as a space<br />spoilt by pedestrians' recklessness.</td></tr></tbody></table></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">There is a mountain of evidence about the costs and causes of the current traffic culture. While the number of traffic deaths to the end of November - 224 – was down on the 252 for the same period in 2014, only 127 people died in London – <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2013/11/a-fort-greene-tragedy-londons-missing.html">a slightly larger city with more motor traffic</a> – in the whole of 2014. Research by Streetsblog, the campaigning website, shows that only around 7 or 8 per cent of crashes involving pedestrians in New York are labelled a result of an error by a pedestrian.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span><span lang="EN-GB">There's no denying that New York pedestrians and cyclists are also often in a hurry. I am frequently frustrated, for example, by pedestrians' rush to cross the street after cars have passed, without looking out for cyclists. I find it tempting to ride through traffic lights just as they're changing precisely because it means I can avoid jostling with drivers when the lights turn green again. When I run through lights a little later than I should, however, I find an even later car nearly invariably following me through. The behaviour of both pedestrians and cyclists is dictated mainly, it seems to me, by their desire to avoid crossing streets or moving away from lights at the same time that cars are doing so.</span><br /><span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Mr Simanowitz’s comments are unusually revealing, meanwhile, about why politicians and the police persist in trying to berate pedestrians and cyclists into solving the problem rather than going after the real issue – driver behaviour. The patronising rhyme – “cross at the green, not in-between” – makes it clear that he regards pedestrians as irresponsible children in contrast to the grown-ups – the drivers – in the streets. I encountered similar reasoning myself recently when I got into a row with a driver who’d pulled out into my path and he quickly fell to insinuating that cycling was a children’s activity.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“You’re a grown-ass man on a push bike!” he yelled, incredulously, as if being an adult in charge of an elderly, collision-damaged Lexus SUV were inherently superior.<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vCjL-3fKt4E/VmS1UNsPFtI/AAAAAAAABvk/o9V2O9DRIB8/s1600/Safety%2BAmsterdam%2BAve%2Bslow%2Bzone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vCjL-3fKt4E/VmS1UNsPFtI/AAAAAAAABvk/o9V2O9DRIB8/s320/Safety%2BAmsterdam%2BAve%2Bslow%2Bzone.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The sign says "slow zone"; the design says fast.<br />Which do you think motorists do?</td></tr></tbody></table><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The rhyme suggests that Mr Simanowitz’s thinking – and, I suspect, that of many other senior politicians – remains dominated by the facile road safety lessons given to children. Those are, typically, predicated on the idea that it’s children’s own job to keep themselves safe. They embrace none of the complexity that the statistics reveal – that most road traffic victims suffer from someone else’s negligence, not their own. It’s as if they were trying to solve the mice’s timidity by giving the mice lessons in strengthening their characters, not keeping the cats at a safe distance.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">There’s little mystery about what it would take to alter the traffic culture. Many New York streets at present look designed precisely to encourage excess speed, not to discourage it. The sidewalks and cycle lanes are mostly add-ons that are sacrificed anywhere that cyclists or pedestrians might slow down or otherwise hamper traffic. Enforcement of traffic laws is haphazard and <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-street-drug-arrest-crackdown-on.html">often directed at harassing cyclists </a>and pedestrians, based on the same fundamental misunderstanding of road relationships that Mr Simanowitz betrayed.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">London, which has made little concerted effort to address road safety and whose transport policies <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2012/09/farewell-to-london-where-cyclings.html">have many shortcomings</a>, has far better figures largely by dint of having better road design, better places to cross the street and far more <a href="http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-precinct-house-string-of-deaths-and.html">speed cameras</a>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">But it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the city as a whole for now takes the view of the people I encountered as I rode down MacDougal St in Greenwich Village on Thursday evening. They stepped out into the bike lane to hail a taxi which then, with considerable predictability, veered left into the bike lane cutting me off and forcing me to come abruptly to a halt.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">They were superficially apologetic and sympathetic.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“Oh – that’s not right,” one of them said.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">But the sympathy wore off in less time than it took me to ask the driver what he thought he was doing.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“Be on your way – we’re in a hurry,” the initially sympathetic man shouted at me, in the stilted tone of a character in a novel.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Then, as I accepted defeat and headed off towards Bleecker Street, he spoke for the city when he yelled after me: “Shit happens – get used to it!”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span lang="EN-GB">This blog is the first after a lengthy delay caused by the Invisible Visible Man’s efforts, among other things, to interest publishers and agents in the possibility of a book based on the blog. I apologise for the interruption.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12.0pt;">The timing of future blogposts will depend on progress in the efforts to find a publisher. Anyone interested in taking me on as an agent or publisher is free to contact me at robert dot wright at ft dot com.</span></i></div>http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2015/12/first-avenue-harassment-talking-down-to.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Invisible Man)19